Mitchell, Parlee

ORAL HISTORY OF PARLEE MITCHELL
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 4, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 4, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mrs. Parlee Mitchell about living in Oak Ridge. Mrs. Mitchell, please state your name, place of birth, and date.
MRS. MITCHELL: My name is Parlee Mitchell. I was born in December 1919.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you born?
MRS. MITCHELL: Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My father was named George Howe.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was he born?
MRS. MITCHELL: He was also born in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother’s maiden name?
MRS. MITCHELL: Her name was Verget Noland.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Her place of birth?
MRS. MITCHELL: Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your father’s school history?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I know he went, but I can’t recall what he went for. I heard him talk about it, but it was there also in Aberdeen, Mississippi. I don’t know – it wasn’t out in no other state.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s schooling?
MRS. MITCHELL: You know, I didn’t hear my mother talked too much about school. I really don’t know whether she went at all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, yes, on my father’s side.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were their names?
MRS. MITCHELL: George Howe – he was named after his daddy. He was the oldest one. Charlie Howe – we have a nickname for those kids. That’s why I am taking my time trying to think of their real names.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were their nicknames?
MRS. MITCHELL: I’m trying to think of my sister, her name. We called her Sister, but I can’t think of her name. Mary was one of them, but she is not the oldest one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe it will come back to you as we go on. What type of work did your father do?
MRS. MITCHELL: He farmed. He was a farmer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of crops did he grow?
MRS. MITCHELL: He grew cotton, corn, and then just vegetables. Tomatoes, peas, potatoes and all kinds of vegetables. He did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work other than taking care of the children, did she work any?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, she didn’t never have to.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live? Where do you first remember living?
MRS. MITCHELL: I first remember living with my grandfather. That was Frank Noland.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: That was in Aberdeen, Mississippi. You know, he lived there just as long as I knew him. When he passed away, he passed away in that old house – I remember when I was a child.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would you describe the house to me, what it looked like?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was just an old common wood house, nothing fancy, like houses nowadays. I go back home nowadays and want to go see the old places where I used to travel, and I don’t know them anymore. I say, “Whose house did you say that was?” She says, “That’s where Willie B. Howe used to live.” That ain’t the old house I remember. They have all these fancy houses sitting out on the side of the road. I don’t even know who lived there. I passed right by somebody I know and don’t even know it. Everything back in those days, you know, was just these old wood houses, half of them are about to fall down. They had to patch them up and keep them going like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the house have screens on the windows?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, not unless you got out there and put them up yourself. Some places people would do that, but not too many. We would have to fight the flies and the bugs and the things like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many people lived in the house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, in the house, let me see. My grandfather, my grandmother, three grandkids, and me and my mother at the time; but we didn’t live there too long before we got out. Our little house wasn’t too far from his house. Me and my mother lived in that little house – wasn’t anybody in it. So, we lived there. We just help them share crop – go down and do what needed to be done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the house have running water inside?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, no. Back in those days, some of these had were the water run the whole time. I can’t think of what it’s called, but I guess you know what I’m talking about. Every once in a while you see one now when you go through different places. I say, “Oh, there’s a well we used to have.” It was a long trough there at this well, and you could set your milk in there. Do you remember those lasso buckets? That’s where we kept our milk. We set the milk in those, and it stayed cool all the time. No refrigerators.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the house heated?
MRS. MITCHELL: You had to cut your wood. At spring time and times when they wasn’t any in the field during the crops, they would be in the woods cutting the wood. At night when we would go to bed, they would light these big old logs. We called that a back stick. Roll it back in there, and that thing would keep the fire all night long. In the morning, they would get up and just put the kindling in the front of it, and then put the other one over. It would not be long before we had a good hot fire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the house warm in the wintertime?
MRS. MITCHELL: If you keep your fire going. If you didn’t, it would get real cold. That’s when you put that big back stick down there. It would hold heat in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have electricity in your house?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, no. My grandmother and her friends always get together and they made quilts. They would make quilts, and that’s what we would sleep on at night. We would say, “Mama, we think we need another quilt tonight. It’s real cold.” She would go get another one and put it on the bed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The beds – were these feather beds? What type of beds were these?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of them were feather bed. My grandmother had a nice feather bed. They would get in there, and you would see them sinking down. Our beds would mostly be some kind of soft straw you could pull and fix. They make a big tick out of the fertilizer sacks. You would push all that dry grass in there. Boy, was it nice the first when we would do that for the winter, and when you jump in there, it would sink down. Shoot, we would be warm in there. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like snug as a bug in a rug? (Laugher)
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m sure the house didn’t have indoor plumbing, did it? Did you have to go outside and use the bathroom?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That would be kind of rough in the winter, especially when it was real cold.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. But you heard of those slop jars, those chambers and things like that. We had plenty of them in the house. We didn’t go out too much at night. Every morning we had to throw all that out. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend school during that time?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some, not too much. The weather was too bad. We lived a long ways from school. When I was sort of little, first grade, I didn’t hardly get no further than the first grade. I think I got just ready for the third when my school was ending. We had to get up in the morning in the cold and get ready to walk to school. Our hands would be so cold. I hate to go back to those old days, but that’s how it was. We had to walk to school and walked back – carry our lunch to school in an old bucket. It would be so cold sometimes they would be frozen, but that’s what we had to eat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about when you went to school? How was the school setting?
MRS. MITCHELL: Now, the school setting – it was just one building. So many classes would sit may be here, and they would call for us primer, first grade, second grade. And that was the way it was. Everybody would know when to get up. They knew where they were. We might’ve had to sit together sometimes. Still, we knew when they would call our class, they could get up in different places and go to the class because we would go up and stand in line with certain teachers. We had two teachers. The assistant teacher would teach us young kids, and the older teacher would teach the older kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of the types of classes you had?
MRS. MITCHELL: They called that primer – that was the first one. Then it was the first grade. And then second grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Reading, writing, and arithmetic?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, I remember Crowell Howe. He was my teacher. When I was a little bitty child, I would say George Howe was my teacher, because I lived around with my people a lot when I was young. I lived with my grandfather. He was the first. Then after I left my grandfather, I went to one of my cousins houses and stayed with him. I got to tell a story about him.
I loved him to death. He had two brothers – Johnny Howe was the one I stayed with. I guess I was about three, I reckon. I stayed with him. Then he had a brother by the name of Andrew Howe. Andrew Howe was his baby brother. He stayed with Johnny Howe also when I stayed with Johnny Howe, but I was just a little child. He had another brother – the older brother was named Pratt Howe, but he just lived across the ditch from us. I just love them all to death because they just spoiled me to death. One day I would always jump up and my Cousin Johnny’s house where I lived. He dipped snuff. He had that old toothpick just rolling in his mouth. You done seen people dip snuff?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MRS. MITCHELL: He would know that I wanted some of that, but he wouldn’t give me any. So one day I got to playing. He says, “Hey, Baby. Come here.” I ran. He picked me up and sat me up in his lap like a little proud thing. He said, “I’m going to let you have some of this.” I said, “Okay.” He got that snuff. He got that toothbrush and tapped it to my tongue. I said, “That good.”
After a while, I started feeling funny. (Laughter) Now, this is too funny to try to tell. He said, “What’s wrong, Baby?” I said, “Let me down.” He let me down. You remember how when those old people use to hide things like them old wash tubs sitting under the house in the water with the drain had a leak in it. I went to this old washtub, and I washed my face. He was watching me because he knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t know. He came to the corner of the house and I was at the washtub just washing my face. He said, “Baby, what’s wrong?” I said, “I’m sick, I’m sick.” I was just crying. He said, “Come here.” I went to him. He wiped my little face and he picked me up and rocked me and rocked and rocked me. I didn’t go to sleep. I was laying up there sick off of that snuff. I just laid on that sofa. He took up all the time he could with me to get me straight. He said, “Now Baby, you know what?” I said, “What Cousin Johnny?” He said, “You never are going to dip snuff. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I’m just turning you against snuff because I seeing you are going to be a snuffer, but you are not ever going to dip in the snuff.” I said, “I sure ain’t! I sure ain’t!” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever dip snuff?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I never did none of that. That was the end of that. Then I looked at him so funny he thought that I thought he had mistreated me. He just came and picked me up and patted me on the back. He said, “I still love you." I looked at him and I wouldn’t act like I thought he still loved me because he did that, you see. Me and him finally got back friends. (Laughter) He told my cousin when he come, my Cousin Andrew, “Johnny, you shouldn’t have treated her like that.” He said, “Well, all I was doing is just making sure she will never be a snuff dipper. If I hadn’t did that to where she watched me, she would’ve been a snuff dipper. That’s broke up. She will never dip snuff.” That was the end of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned about sharecropping. Explain to me what a sharecropping farm is.
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s like – you might have a farm, and I come in, and you will say, “Well, do you want to farm?” I say, “I think so. I think I’d like farming.” He says, “I will tell you what. We’ll sharecrop.” I didn’t know what sharecropping was myself. I said, “What is that?” Well, share cropping, you could work it on halves in one way; work it in thirds in another way. But what it was – how you would work, they would take so much of it. If I’m working for you, I wouldn’t get all that since I was the sharecropper. You were getting more than I would. I would just get some. Maybe I would get a third of it and the halves – I would get half of it and you would get half of it. That’s how that works. I think that’s how me and my husband worked when we were doing that. You know, half and half.
Now, my grandfather and them, when they was working, I never did get too much out of that. How they did that. It wasn’t halves, and it seemed like it was in the third. I think the man like you had everything, and you were to furnish me what I needed. At the end of the crop times – and the money and stuff that came out of the crop I think that’s how that went – they shared the money together. I can remember that the money was shared, and my grandmother was going to kill my grandfather. (Laughter)
They would have this land up in the fall of the year when everything was over and everything is gathered. You would get your share, and they would get their share. She asked my grandfather where the money was. My grandfather said, “We didn’t clear anything.” A lot of us didn’t. Some did, and some didn’t. It’s just because of how much money you use through the year. She got up that morning and put on her clothes and went up to the boss man. She asked him, “Did Frank Noland collect any money?” The boss man told her – Dan Taylor told her, “Yes, what he cleared, I gave it to him.” He told her he didn’t clear any. Well, she came back. She was rough. She came back and got the shotgun. (Laughter) My mother said, “Daddy, Daddy, get up. Get up. Mama is fixing to kill you!” Daddy jumped up and she said, “I think it’s too late now.” She had the gun drawn. (Laughter) Some of the other kids ran in and knocked the gun back. He jumped up and got his clothes and ran out the door. Then she just walked and cried, walked and cried. I can remember that. She said, “I’m glad y’all took the gun because you would a had a dead daddy. He done lied to me and told me he didn’t clear anything and then Dan Taylor said he did.” So, they fought and fussed all day. I think he had to go get some money though to give her. I think that’s how it happened. I don’t know the details of that, but I think that gun wasn’t in the box. She had that shotgun, and she wasn’t playing. She was rough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she let him back into the house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. She let him back in. I think she laid on his soul and then cried because she was so glad that she didn’t. She would’ve been sorry afterward. And so, she cried around there for days about that. Anyway, she told him don’t lie to her no more. She said, “Just don’t lie to me. You don’t know who you’re fooling with. I will kill you. Just don’t lie to me.” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of crops did a sharecropper grow?
MRS. MITCHELL: He grew cotton and corn. That was the main thing. Now, most of the sharecroppers have their black-eyed peas and potatoes and stuff like that. The boss man didn’t hardly fool with that. That’s how we call them back in those days – the boss man. He didn’t fool with that stuff. He planted his, and we would plant ours as much as we wanted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about picking cotton. How do you do that?
MRS. MITCHELL: Get down and pick it. The cotton will come up, and it will grow, and we had to chop it and take care of it. After a while, it would bloom. After it bloomed, the buds would come on it. Then after the buds come on it, it would decide to open up at a certain time. But you give it time to fluff up and come out before you start picking it. Then you get that sack and put it around your neck, and starting putting it into it. I wasn’t too much of a cotton picker. Some people could pick 300 a day. I did every once in a while, I would pick 100 a day, but I wasn’t going to do those 200 or 300 things. I’d pick what I could.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you used to talk about 100 and 300, what is that? Is that the weight of the cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. That’s the weight of the cotton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that pounds? 100 pounds, 300 pounds?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. You’re pulling a long sack behind you. When it got too heavy, you go empty it out. You had your spot to pick your cotton, and another fellow had his spot to pick his cotton. And then sometime in the big farm, and a lot of people were picking, what they would do to keep them coming in was a man at the scales because some sacks will be coming in and coming in. There would be a lot of them. So every time he’d see a sack coming in, he would jump up and pick up a scale and weigh it, and write your name down. Write how much you done picked down. At the evening time when quitting time comes, they would tell every fellow how much they got.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how much money you made for picking cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: Let me see, how much was it? Seemed like it was – I’m trying to think now and get that straighten it out. Surely, it wasn’t more than 100, but it seemed like it was $1. It looked like it was more than that. Some people were paid more than others anyway. I’m pretty sure it was $2 for 100.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At what age do children start picking cotton in the fields with their families?
MRS. MITCHELL: A baby can pick. They come out [baby noises] there and be just picking. (Laughter) Some of it, they be putting on the bud before it be ready – “No, Baby, you can't pull that out.” [baby noises] (Laughter) They would fuss. But a 10-pound sack of flour – I know you never heard of that. It used to be in sacks, not in paper bags. It was in cloth. So we would make little sacks for our babies. We put it around our neck, and then put cotton in it. We thought we were doing something then. Couldn’t tell us a thing. We’d be out there just picking. I remember when I was a baby, a little ol’ thing. I would be out there just picking. And don’t let us get a sack full. Say, “Come on, Baby.” “No.” We want to get the sack further. When we get a sack full, then we could empty them. And then we’d want them to weight it. They were weighing their big sacks. We wanted to hang our little one up there and weigh it too. They’d hang it up there like they were weighing it. I think about it now, they weren’t weighing it because there wasn’t enough to weigh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So the whole family went to the cotton field to pick cotton.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, most of the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about when you had an infant child that wasn’t able to pick cotton? Who looked after them and where did they stay?
MRS. MITCHELL: Now, sometimes we had to take those guys to the field. You hear me talking about these quilts and things we had. We took one of them and find a tree or cotton or corn, and put it there and put that child under it, and let the other little ones stay there with him and take care.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about food? What did you take with you to eat while you were picking cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was always be one to come home and fix dinner – if the older person was there. Now, some places, the older people would be there, like my grandmother or something. She might just go ahead on and cook. Most of the time, she would work, too. But we had a quitting time – maybe at 10 o’clock or 10:30. She had to cook. She would leave the field and go home and cook. We would keep on working until we thought dinner was fixed up. Then we would go to the house and wash up, clean up. It wouldn’t be long before she said it was ready – “Go on in and eat.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you start at daylight and quit at dark?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, certain things we did. Now chopping, we didn’t do that. Cotton, we did that because we wanted to get a lot of time. But chopping we didn’t go out early. One thing about it – we had to stop. We had to milk the cows and get all that stuff before we could go to the field. That’s what we would be doing by daylight –milking the cows, getting all the milk and stuff fixed up, put it in this long trough I was talking about that we had. We had to do all that first. The men-folk could go on before we did because they didn’t do that. We did it mostly. If they milked, they would bring the milk and just set it down. The parents would have to always take care of that and put it where it’s supposed to be put. Stuff like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did your family get other food other than out of the fields? Did they go to the store?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. They would go to the store for groceries maybe, I would say, once a month back in those days. The way they would go is they would hook the mules up to the wagon because there wasn’t that many cars. We didn’t have any. They would go to town, and they would come back with the load. Now, most of the things we bought was sugar and coffee and flour. We raised our own corn. We raised our own meat. We raised all the vegetables, peas, potatoes, and all that stuff. Then we canned. We had big orchards of fruit. I could look back and see those days. My grandmother and them would can, can, can. Well, all that we didn’t have to buy. Like I said, we killed the hogs. We had our meat and we had our lard and stuff like that. It was the biggest thing. And like I said, we would go get that. You could buy flour by the bag. We would buy big old bags of flour. It would last a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any pets like cats or dogs?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any favorite cat or dog?
MRS. MITCHELL: All of them were our favorite. We had one named Blue, and my grandfather would go out at night and say, “Go get him, Blue!” Blue would go out and find a possum. We loved possums. We would eat them for dinner. (Laughter) Back in those days, I didn’t know any better. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother make your clothes?
MRS. MITCHELL: Back in those days, when the winter and fall would come in, they were all shipping in the material that would come into town. We lived in Aberdeen at that time. All of the material– the linen, outing, print, corduroys – all kinds of material would be shipped in. It was a certain time at the end of the fall for the year. It would get cold. They would go to town and buy all that stuff, and they would come back and start sewing.
Back in those days, the girls wore dresses. They didn’t wear what they are all wearing now. They wore dresses, and they first better be covered up with those dresses. Wasn’t no half naked going around back in those days. The boys wore overalls. I don’t remember blue jeans and things back in those days. They would be overalls. Do you know how – my grandmother and most of them would know how to sew them. They would get material and make overalls and little suspenders, and put them hooks on them and everything and fix them up. They would make us dresses. They would make us coats, sweaters, and things like that. Not too much of stuff like that we would buy. They would go and make that stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they teach you how to sew?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, a little bit. They taught me, but I didn’t keep it up. I’d see stuff start to come in, and you could go buy it. They got to where they didn’t want to wear those made clothes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of shoes did you wear?
MRS. MITCHELL: You could go and get shoes sort of like you do now. Lace-up high tops.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Lace up type shoes?
MRS. MITCHELL: You’d lace them up. They had them for boys and for girls. So that’s what we wore to school. We had to wear them out in the cold snow and stuff. We had to wear them shoes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family attend church when you were growing up?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. That’s why I got my church after going with my family. They just said the old things. What I used to do, I don’t do no more because I didn’t come up to do it. We lived it like good girls and good boys back in those days.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned you had a mule and wagon. Is that how the family got to church and every other place they wanted to go?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Sunday morning, Saturday – get out there and clean up that old wagon, wash it up, clean up all the mules and what they had to wear in the field, have them shine up. My grandpa was good on that. He’d call the boys and say, “Clean up these gears and things for Sunday.” They’d clean up all that. They’d get the wagon all swept out and everything, washed out if it needed. It would be clean. We would be clean. We would go to the church where the clean house was and serve the Lord.
We had to cross a creek once. I don’t know what was wrong with those people. The bridge sort of got raggedy, and the mules was scared. They were afraid, they were going to fall in, and we was afraid we were going to fall in. We got on that old bridge that morning, and the mules started snorting and backing up. One of the wheels slipped off and went like it was going in the creek. We started hollering and crying. They said, “Be quiet. We are going to make it.” And we pulled it out, and we got back home. They took them so long before they ever fixed the bridge. Every Sunday when we got to that bridge, we let the driver go across, and we’d get out and walk across. The driver had to stop on the other side of that bridge and let us get back on. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you wear special clothes for Sunday that you didn’t wear through the week?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. We had our little church clothes. We didn’t wear our little church clothes through the week. We would be clean. Our parents believed in cleanliness. And my grandmother – she was a seamstress. As I said, when they go in and buy that material, she wouldn’t just go get a piece of cloth. They would get a lot of cloth. She would come in and make me sew for about two weeks, getting everybody’s clothes together. We thought we were so cute in them little cute new clothes, you know. We wasn’t going in the field then. We was going to church to serve the Lord.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were there neighborhood kids you played with? Or did you play with your own family most of the time?
MRS. MITCHELL: There were a few neighborhood kids – just a few of us could get together every once in a while. It wasn’t everyday stuff because folks was working and keeping the kids at the house and watching over them, making them do the right thing. I had one little friend – two little friends I would play with. We would get together and play sometimes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of games would you play?
MRS. MITCHELL: We would play Hide and Go Seek, and we’d play with dolls. I guess you might have read, I don’t know if you read that one line about how we used to make our own dolls. And we would play dolls and had doll houses. We would make trees and sit over here, where we would have dolls. We would meet together over there in them trees and just sit and visit and have the dolls talking just like they were visiting. We would have fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your doll made out of?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of them were made out of a cotton ball when we could steal a cotton ball and make a head out of it. We would fix the head like that, and then we dot it with a pencil. We would make the little eyes by dot it with the pencil. Then if we wanted the rough skirt or something like that, we might get some corn shucks you know and fix them or something and make it like that. They would be so cute, and then we would name the dolls different names. They would go visit different houses. My doll house was sitting over here, and my auntie’s doll house was sitting over there, and we would visit each other like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the first job that you got other than outside the farm.
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, the first job I got was at that home – I should have brought one of my papers with me. What kind of home was it?
MR. HUNNICUTT: A nursing home? Like a nursing home?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was an old people’s home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We call it a nursing home, today. Old people’s homes, in those days.
MRS. MITCHELL: Right. It was something about the county. It was a county home. They county was taking care of it. I never liked that. It was good people. I started working there, and they all called me “Cook” there. I was the cook. “Hey, Cook – can I have so and so?” Sometimes I’d say, “We’re going to have to ask Miss Brown about that. I don’t know if you can have it.” I knew how far I could go with things, but I had to run it past Miss Brown – “Mr. so and so back here wants some things.” She would come in. She was nice. They was nice people. She’d have a talk with me. She’s say sometimes, “Parlee, if they come to the door and want something like that, you can let them have it.” I’d say, “Okay, I’ll do that.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think I read where your mother was in this particular old folk’s home.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. My mother was in that home. I didn’t bring that up. My mother was in that home twice, because that’s where my mother was when I stayed with this Johnny that gave me snuff. I was just a little child. She was there then in that home because me and her were staying with my grandfather at that time. She got so down and wasn’t able, needed all this medicine and stuff. They just sent her to that home. When she first got out of that home, I went back to stay with my grandfather and we pretty much just stayed with my grandfather. But anyway, she was in that place twice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Am I right that your grandfather and grandmother helped you with some schooling along the way when you stayed with them?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, my dad started out with us because like you said my dad went to school. He knew a good much in schooling. He said, “Since they can't go, I’m going to teach them at home.” My grandpa said, “Well, alright.” There weren’t all these different kind of rooms then. We had one big fireplace, and my daddy sat over in the corner, and my grandmother sat in the corner, and my grandfather sat in the middle. He was very quiet, my grandfather was. Anyway, my daddy started out, and we started pretty good with him – until it got pretty rough. We didn’t know. Then my daddy got mad, and we started fussing on him. We didn’t know that much – first grade, second grade. We never put together. The grades went up. We didn’t know anything about it. He would get mad with us because we weren’t interested enough in it. He decided he was going to whoop us. Grandpa said – my grandpa didn’t talk – he said, “Wait a minute. If these kids don’t want to learn, there’s not going to be no whooping.” Grandma raised up over that. She said, “Sure ain’t. It’s not in the whoopings. We don’t mind you teaching if they want to listen. But if they get to where they don’t want to listen, just let them go. They’ll learn the best they can.” So there wasn’t no whooping. We went on. We learned pretty good. We had to learn things. We learned by others – what they were doing, how they acted, how they did. But one thing we had to do was go to church. We didn’t mind. We learned. It got to where we loved to go to church. Sundays we couldn’t go to church with those old dolls we had, we had a church out in the woods. We would go to church and take our dolls with us. We would sing and pray. We would shout. We would cry. We would get happy, just like we were at real church. We had real church. We would go out of the house, and we had an auntie. We called her Adele. She said, “What’s wrong with y’all?” We done had a good time. She said, “Next Sunday, I’m going to church with y’all.” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you got this first job at the old folks home?
MRS. MITCHELL: I guess I was about 19. I think I was 19.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get from where you lived to the old folks home each day?
MRS. MITCHELL: I stayed there. See, my mother stayed there. Since my mother stayed there, me and my mother shared the house. I stayed in the house where she stayed. She had two – it was three of them that had lived in this house, her and two blind men. That’s how they would do it. The blind men and the blind women – it didn’t matter which one. They would put one in there that could see so they could help take care of the blind. They were real nice. One sit in the corner and he sung and prayed all day. I enjoyed him. He just sat over there and prayed, prayed, prayed. Anyway, that’s how I got there. Every morning I would get up. We had to go out and make breakfast. She got up, too – the lady that kept the house. Me and her fixed breakfast together. She made the biscuits. I fried the meats – bacon and the sausage, and made the gravy. When we’d all get done, we had – we called it the mess hall. They were long, like that county over there. They were a little bit longer, and they would come to the mess halls to eat. We would get breakfast done, we rang a bell, and we’d go outside and ring the bell. They all would come to eat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who paid? Did the people in the old folks home have to pay to be there?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, the county paid for it, that’s why they called it the county home. It was something the country taken care of. They paid – the ones that were taking care of us and lived there, they paid them so much a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of dress did you wear clothes-wise when you worked at the home?
MRS. MITCHELL: Just common clothes –anything I had to wear. It wasn’t nothing you had to dress up all in white and in uniforms nothing like that. Just be clean. That’s all I was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was seven days a week.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Sundays and Saturdays – I was off on Sunday. Saturdays I would get off with a half a day and go to town that evening if I wanted to. The bosses and all – we would get ready and go to town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: During your off time, you went to town. What else did you do?
MRS. MITCHELL: That would be it. Town was a long way. When you went to town, you knew you were going to spend that time. You wouldn’t get home until the end of the night. What she did, she would give them supper. And then on the Sundays, she would feed them. I could go off to church if I wanted or go visit. The boss lady – she would give them their dinner and their supper.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You had to walk everywhere you went?
MRS. MITCHELL: If I didn’t get a ride. Sometimes I would ask him would he run me to church or would he run me somewhere – the boss man. Either way, she didn’t drive that much. He would.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The boss man had a car?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. They had cars. He would run me up to church. They had a son that comes on. That son seemed like he was my son. Everything I asked Charles to do, he would go do it. I said, “Charles, I’m going to run to a baptizing this evening right down the road here.” He know what a baptizing would be. He said, “Alright, I come and get you.” That day Charles just could never get there. And when he did come, he really drove. That’s when these new, big ol’ Chevrolet trucks come out with the big windows on the side. It was beautiful, and it was green. I said, “Here comes Charles.” We jumped in the car. Up the road, me and my cousin had better start walking. We jumped in the car. He run us right down the road to the baptizing. He run back because his mom and daddy were waiting on him, and I didn’t know that. We run back. When he run back, they got on him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me again who Charles was.
MRS. MITCHELL: Charles was the Brown’s son. I would go see him when I go home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is his father the boss man?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, he was the one I started working for at the home. Charles – I believe he was about 4 years old when I started working for him. I still go see him, bless his ol’ heart. He’s so big now and fat. When I walked in, I started laughing. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your future husband?
MRS. MITCHELL: I met him there. It was a bunch of people lived down next to this place where I worked at. He found some people to work for him, and they moved over there. They come from Chickasaw County across in the prairie. You ever heard talk of the prairie?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: A lot of Army work, and stuff went on over there. They lived across from [inaudible]. But anyway, they got over there. Some of them were working for us. And then Mr. Brown needed a wedge chain to do some of his work. He told the boys to see if they could find anybody to come over there. They did. They had one to come. Well, they tried about two or three really to come. Different ones would come, and they’d stay a while and leave. They was married, and their wives would want them to come and the kids would be crying, didn’t know where their daddy was. They just finally gave up and went back. Then this single man comes – no, there was two single mans. One single man – I didn’t pay him no attention. He wanted to know – no, I wasn’t dating. Well, my husband come along.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My husband was named Clint. Did you see me and him in the paper?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: Me and him got together. We dated for a while, and we finally got married.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do on a date? Where did you go? What was a date like in those days?
MRS. MITCHELL: What was a date like? Oh, we’d go to town. I was already going to town, so we would go to town and shop and come back. He stayed down the road with some of the friends that had done moved over there. I lived there on the place that I was working at. So every morning he would come up and eat his breakfast. We’d get to feeding the other folks, and me and him would sit out and eat breakfast. He would milk the cows and feed the hogs. We had different jobs that they had to do until crop time came. Then he’d help in the field with the crops and all that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the date and where did you get married?
MRS. MITCHELL: We got married right there –at the county home out in the yard. It was really nice, a beautiful December day. Christmas day – beautiful.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: 1940. I think it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you got married, where did you first live?
MRS. MITCHELL: Let me back up on that. You know how the president vote for presidents or vote for anything you want to be?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MRS. MITCHELL: Did you vote to get to do this job? (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: Anyway, it was a voting thing. Mr. Brown and several men go to this big place where you voted – just like you’re voting for anything. He got beat that time. He had been there for three years, I believe. And the highest vote would get it. Boy, he come back and come talking about how he lost. I said, “You lost, Mr. Brown?” He said, “Yes, Parlee, I have to get out of here. The next man is going to take over.” I said, “Okay.” Me and Clint said we was going to get married. He said, “Parlee, you all still going to get married?” I said, “I guess we will. We thought we was going to still have a job.” He said, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do.” We were just like his children. He treated us like we was his children. He said, “I’m going to find a place to live, and the place that I’m going to find has to have two houses on it. I’m going to tell them I want a house for myself, and I want a house for my maids that was working for me now.” So they going go get married, and I got to have a house for them. He would go every day, looking for a place to stay and come back. “Parlee, I didn’t have no luck today. I didn’t found two houses. I found a whole lot of single, but not two.” The day he found two, he come in just like “Miss Parlee, I found two houses on the place.” I said, “Oh, did you? Good!” He said, “You getting married, and y’all going to stay with me. You’re going to be like my children.” They were so nice to us. I said, “Okay, we going to get married. You ain’t got to worry about that. We going to get married Christmas day out in the yard.” That tickled him. Some of my friends come in the wagons. They didn’t have a car. They come the long way, stayed down there for the wedding and all. Then they got ready and left. So we went on and got married. The first of the year – that’s when you had to get out of that place and let the other folks move in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This was the old folks home?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mm-hm. It was rough that day. I just cried because the man that got the place – he said, “We have all this bedding that’s fixed up.” I knew this man. He lived up there from my grandpa in the house. I said, “Mr. Marty West don't know what he got into. He already don’t know what he done.” I done tell him before I left home about Mr. West. I said “Some of the kids should help him.” Well, he finally got there. All the stuff Mr. Brown had bought since he been there, he just started to run it up. What it does – when a new one come in, he’s supposed to pay you for the stuff that you done bought and had there. He said he wasn’t going to pay him and just let it stay there. Mr. Brown said, “No, it’s not going to be like that.” So when this man come in the fire was just running up stuff, I was crying. It got on my nerves. I didn’t want to see all that stuff. He said – this man come in just raising Cain. He was cussing and going on. He said, “Why are you buying up stuff?” Said, “I’m buying it and get it out of your way so you can put your new stuff in here.” Well, he said, “I thought you were going to let this stay here.” He said, “I wasn’t going to let it stay here and just give it to you. You’re supposed to give me so much money for that.” About half of it was burned up. He told the man, “Well just stop burning. I’ll pay you what’s left here.” He said, “Then I had to bring some new stuff in.” Well, dark was coming. Night was coming. The new wasn’t there, and the old stuff was burned up. Well, later on that night, we saw some trucks coming in from Ambree, Mississippi. They were bringing in the new stuff he had to go up there and get and bring it here. They don’t know, but some of us was trying to help the stuff fixed up for the old folks to go to bed. Some of them old people was helpless, and they went to bed early. They were ready to go to bed. We finally got everything done, and got all the old stuff out of the way. We had to get your stuff out of the way that day. We couldn’t let it stay there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You and your husband got married and lived in the house next to the man that was …
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, Mr. Brown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He ran the old folks home, and he lost his job because he didn’t get reelected.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. That’s right. That’s how it was – just like the president losing their job. He lost his job because he didn’t get it. He always got elected, but he lost that year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you and your husband have children?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. We had children later on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your first child’s name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My first child was named Virga Mae. Next was Eloise. Next one Baby C. Next one Clint, Jr. I could go on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many children do you have in all?
MRS. MITCHELL: We have 11 in all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You and your family came to Oak Ridge. Why did you come to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of his people moved from Chickasaw County up here and got a job, and they visited us. They would come over on our side and see us. They was talking about the nice jobs up here you could work. So my husband decided he would come up here and try it. He came up here and worked a while. He liked it. He came back, and I guess we stayed down there about a year. What he did – he stopped fooling with his farm and got to doing day work. There was a little plant that moved down there over at Prairian. He started working over there. The boss man told him one day – Mr. Brown said, “Clint, seemed like you were just leaving me.” He’d have day work for Clint to do around the house, and he would want the day work done. Clint would be gone off to his job. So he said one day, “I think that this house is going to be Clint’s. You got a job. I think I have to have somebody else to stay in this house to help me out.” I told him okay. Clint went right up the road and asked the man about his house, and he told him he could have it. This man and all this –everybody there was friends. This man asked Mr. Brown was it okay. “What’s wrong with you all down there, Mr. Brown? Clint asked me if he could rent that house up there. I told him yes. Is it okay with you, Mr. Brown?” He told him, “Yeah, it’s fine with me. I told him I needed my house to get somebody to help me out. He told me okay. I didn’t know where he was going to get a house. So he asked you. Let him come on up there.” We went up there and stayed with this man on his property. Everything I wanted and needed – I come back down to Clyde Burrows where I lived.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You said your husband came to Oak Ridge. He got a job while he was up here, or did he just come to visit?
MRS. MITCHELL: He come up here. He mostly was coming to visit, but they told him about this job. He came back home and worked there a while, and then the boss told him – wrote a letter and told him he could come on. This place was open, and he could get started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. And then he came back to Oak Ridge and got started. Then after he got a job again, he decided to move his family up here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of job did he get at Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: He worked at K-25. As far as what he’s done, I don’t know. That’s what he started with. I think it was K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He got a job at K-25, and then he moved you and the rest of the family to Oak Ridge. Where did you first live in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I lived at 281 S. Benedict.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was a house like two apartments – one on each end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like duplex type house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the house fairly new?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. The unit wasn’t an old and broke down either. It was nice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the year that you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I did. I can’t think now. It was 1953.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you first got to Oak Ridge and got your household established anything about it now, how was life different when you left Mississippi and when you came to Oak Ridge? Did you see a big difference in the two places?
MRS. MITCHELL: To tell the truth about it, we just got here and got jobs and went to work. That was all about it. I missed home and I missed Mississippi. I would go home regular because I had a sister-in-law down there that I just loved. Clint had a sister down there. I would love to go down there and visit sometimes. I would go down there sometime and stayed two weeks visiting after these kids grew up. They could take care of themselves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a car?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get back and forth to Mississippi?
MRS. MITCHELL: I rode the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you have to go to get the bus in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: To the bus stop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the name of the neighborhood where you first moved in Oak Ridge? What did they call that area over there?
MRS. MITCHELL: Scarboro.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it called Scarboro when you first came?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was Gamble Valley and then Scarboro. The name started out Gamble Valley. I think that’s what the name was, but they changed it to Scarboro.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was originally a trailer park there in the early days.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, once. I wasn’t here in those days. When I lived, it was just like it is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Over in Scarboro community, did you have grocery stores and items like that over there?
MRS. MITCHELL: There was one there when I first came. We shopped at it a lot. It was just right down the street from there. I could go out there and get our meats, good meats there, and flour, milk. It was just like a grocery. You could go down there and get what you needed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a school for your children to attend?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Where I live now, the school is right across from my house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mrs. Mitchell, describe the duplex house you lived in when you first came to Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: It had two bedrooms and it – a living room and two bedrooms, a kitchen, and one bath.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many people lived in the house at this time?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was me and my husband and my mother. That was three – and I believe it was seven children. We didn’t have all the kids then. It was seven kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wow. Where did everyone sleep?
MRS. MITCHELL: (Laughter) Everywhere. I had to make beds. Me and my husband had a little small bedroom, and my mother and the girls had the big bedroom. The boys slept in the living room on the floor.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your children went to school over in the Scarboro community. How far away was the school from where you lived?
MRS. MITCHELL: It wasn’t that awful far. They could walk. Now, I lived right across from that school where they used to go to.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house you live in now?
MRS. MITCHELL: A split foyer with three levels.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were first living in Oak Ridge, did you go to work?
MRS. MITCHELL: I wasn’t here long before I went to work. There was plenty of work here back in those days. My husband – after he worked at that plant for a while, that place where he went, it just went. I don’t know what happened while he worked. Then he started working at the Alexander Hotel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did he do there?
MRS. MITCHELL: A bellhop. One day while he was there a man came in and spoke to him and everything, talking about they needed somebody did he know anybody could work for him. He said – we hadn’t been too long moved to then, “My wife would like to have a job.” He said, “You tell her about us and let us talk to her and see how she works for us.” So he came and told me about it. I got ready. I think I went over there and met them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was this at the Alexander?
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s where he worked at.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go when you went for your job interview?
MRS. MITCHELL: I just went to our house. When I went over there, it was the mother and the son and their daughter. It was the parents and their daughter. They had a little boy. I walked around and told him I could start working for him. I come to find out they didn’t live too far from me in Mississippi – just up in another town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their names?
MRS. MITCHELL: Gillams. They were Harry Gillams.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where they lived?
MRS. MITCHELL: They lived on Manhattan. What is that number?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Over in the Woodland area?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. It was on Manhattan not far from that store. You remember where that little store was?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Woodland Shopping Center.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. I could walk down there to that store. It was right up the hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get from your home to their home to work?
MRS. MITCHELL: Somebody else was working over there, and I would get a ride with them. Then if I didn’t do that, I could get the bus. Buses were running back in those days. I would ride one bus that would come by my house. I could catch it and right onto the bus and get another bus that went by over there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did you do when you went to their home?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was just housecleaning. It wasn’t nothing but housework – make the beds, vacuum, clean, dust, cook. I had to cook. I had to think about what I was going to cook every day. “Well, what is we going to cook today?” “Well, Parlee just think about it and just go on and cook it.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they ask you what type of groceries to bring in so you could cook for them?
MRS. MITCHELL: You know what? Since that store was right over there, they would keep most of the groceries. There was a store right down there, and they had a little boy. He loved to go to the store when he wanted to, I’ll say it like that. Sometimes I thought I was going have to whoop him before he would go. (Laughter) I said, “Mom and them want this thing for dinner today.” “Parlee, I ain’t going to no store today.” I said, “Yes you are.” “No, I am not.” I said, “We are going to see about that.” I would keep at him. “I’m going to tell my mom and dad you made me go to the store.” I said, “They said you would go. I’m going to tell them on you because you wouldn’t go.” He would go to the store and get what I needed. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they leave you money to buy groceries?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, they would leave the money. Or they would put it on their bill. He would go down there and pay it. They knew I was up there working for them. I imagine he made a play with the people. They let me have anything I needed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you are raising your family when you first came to Oak Ridge, describe how Christmas time was when you came to Oak Ridge. How was it at Christmas time?
MRS. MITCHELL: At Christmas time when I first came here that year – that was in November, wasn’t it? I believe it was in November. They were just fixing it – you know how they give you this stuff and give people baskets and all that. They just give them so much stuff. I didn’t have to worry about anything. They just gave us and gave us and gave us. Christmas time – here comes all this. We weren’t used to that. They would have all this stuff. Like they done now, you know. You know how they gather up all this stuff. Well me with all those kids, we had more than we could eat. It was real good. They would give you clothes, I had all those kids. They would bring me clothes. I had all those kids, and they would bring us clothes. It would be a lady that would may be come out and see what size they were and stuff like that. Then they would go back and they would just bring nice baskets and nice bags of clothes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were a child growing up, how was Christmas event?
MRS. MITCHELL: We got a stick of candy and a doll and one apple and one orange. That seemed to work, I guess. There wasn’t such a thing as eating fruits all through the year, like folks do now. When you would go to this town and get this stuff, the train would come in. We little children would just be having a fit. “There’s the train! There’s the train!” That little train, “Toot, toot.” [inaudible] we would be in our wagon, and the wagon – we would be clapping our hands so happy. You could smell that fruit. You didn’t smell fruit like that until Christmas time. Them trains of that done brought this stuff then and them doors would be open and that fruit would be coming all over town – you could smell them good apples, bananas, oranges. And they would be carrying it on their shoulder toting it to the store. It was something to see.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the story about Santa Claus – did they tell that the children and you were growing up?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. They couldn’t wait. They would go to bed too early at night waiting for Santa Claus to come. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever leave anything out for Santa Claus to eat?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, they would get up and get mad and say, “He tried to eat of all this cake. Look at this big bowl of chocolate.” (Laughter) They would be so mad about that. I told them I would cook another. “But we wanted that one.” They would be mad at Santa Claus. I’d say, “Well look what all he brought.” They’d say, “Yeah, but he ought to have brought that and went on. He didn’t have to eat the cake up.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you found out about Santa Claus – who the Santa Claus was – were you disappointed, or did it make any difference?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t guess it made any difference because I don’t remember nothing about it back in those days. It wasn’t anybody but me and my mother back in those days. Nobody put that out there, but her and her sister saying there was no Santa Claus. Some of the children would sit up and try to watch, and they seen for sure. They would come and tell me, “Didn’t nobody do that but your mama. We saw Daddy and Mama do that last night.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: The thrill of knowing about Santa Claus was something else.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, that was a big story about Santa Claus and how he did the children and all – they would be down looking [inaudible]. But the first time I [inaudible] I was with my Cousin Johnny. I remember – I heard something. I’m sitting up there and thinking [inaudible]. I heard something. I looked around and Santa Claus was crawling and coming up through that house, and that like to have been the death of me. They had a time trying. That scared me to death. I saw that thing coming and all that hair on his face and then he done turned sideways and looking up there at me. (Laughter)You talk about screaming and hollering, they never got me settled down. I don’t think I slept at night. I cried all night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about raising your family and working, too, in the early days of Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: My oldest daughter learned to cook in her early days. She was young, but she could cook because she learned to cook even at home. I guess she was about… I don’t know how old she was, but anyway so she did the cooking mostly. Maybe if it was something big, I might cook it earlier and eat it for dinner – the refrigerator when we got a refrigerator. Back at home, I never did get a refrigerator back in Mississippi. We could buy ice and we had ice boxes. Even now the people I lived with, it was a long time lived there in the home and before they got a refrigerator. I would get ice from them sometimes, but I never did get a refrigerator in Mississippi. I didn’t get one until my husband was working at the Alexander Hotel. We got one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you wash your clothes when you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: On the old rub board. I wash my clothes on the ironing board in Mississippi, and I washed on it when I got here. Did you read that paper? You didn’t read the paper, did you? About the first washing machine I got – you didn’t read that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about it.
MRS. MITCHELL: I shouldn’t tell you because he should’ve read the paper. (Laughter) You make me think you didn’t pay me no attention. (Laughter) One day I was down in the house and somebody knocked at my door. I looked, and it was a friend of mine. She was fixing to leave and go north, and she said, “Parlee, I come down here to tell you something. I have a washing machine. It’s an old ringer type. I come down here to ask you if you wanted it.” I said, “Yes, I want it.” She said, “You can have it. Something is going on about that washer, but I don’t know. I don’t care what nobody come here and say, you tell them that’s your washer because I give it to you.” So somebody else must have wanted that washing machine because she was acting rough about it. “It’s yours and we’re going to bring it down here.” They didn’t live too far from me. Her and her children got it and rolled it on down the hill, right on down the hill and guided it into my house and rolled it in there. She said “This is yours.” I hugged her and cried because what she had asked me about a TV – at least the question was asked about a TV. I told her I walked into the house and looked at the TV that day. My little girl was on there turning a flip. I looked at that, and my kids did that every day. I turned around and come on and went right back into the kitchen and did my work. I said, “It didn’t impress me at all.” TV didn’t impress me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the first time you saw TV?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mm-hm. I didn’t care. I went back in the house and started working at somebody’s house. I went on back and started to work. Anyway, when the washing machine came in, that is what I wanted. All that seven children I had and I had to get on that rub board and rub, I just hugged her and cried. I like that so much. She left me and went on to the north somewhere. She was here last year. I couldn’t get to talk to her. It seemed like my mind got mixed up or something. There is something wrong with her now, but I just loved her to death for that. It was just a ringer type you know back in those days. I threw my clothes in there and washed it and I would grab them and hang them on the line. That was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the neighbors friendly in your neighborhood?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Of course some of my people lived close by. My husband’s sister lived across in the front of us. She was just as sweet as she could be. Anything you could ask her to do enough, she was always toddling around and she was sort of heavy and she’d just toddle around, and trying to see all the kids and knew what they had and what they didn’t have. She was as sweet as she could be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned there was a store in the area. What else do remember in the area where the shopping took place? Did they have a barbershop?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah and a pool hall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that area called a particular name? Did you referred to it as a certain name?
MRS. MITCHELL: The Block. It was blocked off with all different things. That’s what they named it – the Block.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s kind of the gathering point of a lot of the people on the community?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a telephone?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about milk and groceries? Was all that bought over there on the Block, or did you go elsewhere in the city to buy it?
MRS. MITCHELL: Sometimes we would, but sometimes we would get it down there, too. We could go to the stores. We finally started going to the stores to get our groceries.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What activities outside of the home did you get involved in other than working? Did you belong to any clubs?
MRS. MITCHELL: Church is all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What church did you attend?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mt. Zion Baptist.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was it located?
MRS. MITCHELL: It’s located in Scarboro. It’s not far from what you are talking about – the Block. Do you ever know anything about the Block?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: That big white church right before you get the Block – that’s where I go.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How have you seen the community change from when you first came into Scarboro up to this day today? I know segregation was in those days. Tell me a little bit about that. What do you remember about the segregation times, during that time period?
MRS. MITCHELL: To tell you the truth about me, stuff like that didn’t never bother me too much. Like riding a bus – they wanted the blacks to sit in one place and the whites to sit in other places. That’s something I would forget. I also used to just go on in. One day I sat somewhere. I got on the bus and just sat down and somebody said, “You will get in trouble sitting there. Come back here with me.” I said, “What is that all about?” I went on back there and sat with them. When the white folks got on, they got on in the front seat. I said, “Oh, that’s what they meant.” I didn’t know what they were trying to tell me to come back there for. That’s what it was all about. Blacks were always in Gamble Valley. We had to go to the white section to work. When we get over to the white section, the white people rode the bus, too. So that’s how they come in. They got me so mixed up, you see. In our community, we just got on the bus and got in the front seat okay. But when you get over in their community and they get ready to get on the bus, it made a difference.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you mistreated in any way during that time period?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I just went along with what they said. I would tell people about me and where I lived. I hadn’t had any problem. It was rough in Mississippi in some places, but I didn’t have any problem. I stayed there like I said. Those people were good to me, and they would tell us who not to fool with it. Sometimes the whites would come in and hang with the blacks. If Mr. Brown would tell my husband, he’d say, “Don’t deal with them. Just stay like you are. They are looking for trouble. Them kind of folks will get you out and get you in trouble.” He was real nice. He didn’t play. He would tell us right from wrong. We were just like his children, and that’s how we got along with him. We couldn’t of been with no better people except him because he was just like our father. Anything he had, we had. When he got electric lights a long time before electric lights came in in Mississippi, we got electric lights. Everything they had, we had. The only thing he would laugh and tell us is that, “I ain’t got no money.” He didn’t have no money, and we didn’t have no money. We would just laugh about that. (Laughter) When I was cooking for him, his wife one night , she got aggravated at him. She said, “Clyde” – that was his name, Clyde – “if you was to die tonights, I wouldn’t know what you had. You never sit down and tell me what you have and what you ain’t got.” He put a big smile on his face and cut his eyes over there. He said “I ain’t got nothing that’s the reason why I can’t tell you.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about some of the other people that you worked for in Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: Did you ever know Tom Clary?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: They were the first house I went to work for. Well, the first somebody I saw were those Gilliams people working in their homes. Then Tom Clary came in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where do they live – the Clary’s?
MRS. MITCHELL: At that time they lived back there in those apartments behind Penney’s. You know those big red apartments back there? He lived back there. How that got started with him, now, I worked with for some people. Did you know Jim Reading, the old Buick Company? Did you know about that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: I worked for some people who worked at that place. They were from Chattanooga. You are talking about some [inaudible]. That’s one thing about me. I have worked for nice people. I didn’t work for nobody that wasn’t nice. I didn’t have to work for them. I would walk off and tell them I would work at somebody’s house and work that day. And next week if I go and they are talking about something that they didn’t like when I left that evening, I said “Well, I hope y’all have fun. I might meet you sometime on the street and speak to you.” That meant I wasn’t coming back. But anyway – these Reading people worked for the Buick Company. I worked from them. They were from Chattanooga. Did you know Mr. Clary? Did you know Tom Clary?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: You never did know him. He’s from Chattanooga. What it was about the Reading people, they lived in Chattanooga. When his mother died, Miss Reading was there and watched over Tom Clary. He was just like a son of hers. She watched him all through school. Everything he did, she wasn’t saying nothing, but she watched him. She told me about this boy. She would come home at lunch when I was working for her. She would come home for lunch, and me and her would talk and talk and talk. When they got ready to build a mall, she called him. She says, “Tom, I want you to come on up here. They are fixing to build a mall, so you might get you a job.” He come on up. He looked at the place and everything. She asked him how he liked it. He said, “I like it pretty good.” She said, “Do you think you like it well enough to get you a job?” He said, “Yeah, I think I will try.” Anyway, he had the hardware store. So that’s what he went in for, the hardware store. Well, he called his dad, and his dad come up. All that talking about him and his mother – she never did say nothing about her daddy. When they said that Daddy was coming up, I got to thinking, “She never said anything about the daddy.” Anyway, Dad came on up and looked at the place. They asked him did he like it, and he said he did. Daddy laid out so much money for him to get started; he went on and got started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the hardware store?
MRS. MITCHELL: In the hardware business.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was this in the Downtown area?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Downtown Shopping Center, we called it.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. He was down up under Sears. Sears was on top, and there was his store under there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe that would’ve been around 1955 or somewhere in that range.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. I think so. Anyway – he really wanted somebody to clean for him. She says, “I told him Parlee. I think you had a day off that you could help them.” I said, “I can help them.” He moved them. He just had one little room – the bedroom. It looked like a little kitchen and a little living room altogether. Anyway – he would come down. He was just billing there – billing the store. He would come down and open up after they got it like that. He would open up and he would go back home and go to sleep. Well, when I got ready to go, I would go on to the store and worked until he came. He said, “Parlee, I left the door open so you can go on.” I would walk at his house. His partners were nowhere from Downtown. I would go up to his house and clean his house, and then I would come back to the store and work. I put in a lot of labor there. I would be so tired sometimes, but I knew how to work to keep myself going. It started raining hard on the people waiting, you talk about a mess. We were in some mess. Mud – they had to go out and come back in. They would bring mud in. I would mop, mop. He came to me one day and he said, “Parlee, I’ll tell you what to do. Get another mop. When you mop this up, dry it up with this mop.” I had two mops. People still come in there laughing, “Don’t nobody work in the store, but this lady here has two mops.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much money you made?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I don’t. I don’t remember what I was getting back in those days. Anyway, it was a help. Well, he fooled around – the same lady I was talking about. They would go home every weekend. Mr. Clary would go home. She said, “Parlee.” I said, “What?” She said, “Tom didn’t come eat with me Sunday.” She would cook because he was just like her son. She loved that boy to death. She was taking care of him. She said, “You know what? I believe he done got a girlfriend. I believe he’s courting and fixing to get married no doubt. He stopped coming to eat with me.” While the next week he went home, and he wasn’t there. The next day we know that he done got married. She said, “Parlee, I told you.” I said, “You sure did say you did.” Anyway – after he got married, I still worked for him. She was a schoolteacher, she went on teaching and she got her job teaching school and all. He was working at the store. I still worked at the store. I just kept on. Every chance I would get some time, I would work at the store twice a week because I didn’t have as much other days. We all got along good. He got married, and here she comes getting kind of fat. I looked at her. (Laughter) She had a little boy and named him Tom, after his daddy. He was the sweetest thing. I would just rock him and sing to him. Ms. Clary heard me singing to him one day, and she said, “Oh, Parlee your singing to Tom this morning.” He lay in there looking up at me with those little eyes just shining, and I’m just rocking him. When the thunder and all come in I’d be there. I was singing a church song to him. She said, “She was singing a beautiful song.” She was telling the whole story. I rock Tom to sleep and got him and put him in the bed. I wrapped them up, and he went on to sleep. She was out there washing the clothes. She came on and got ready. They should grow Tom up so sweet. Here comes another little boy. That little boy came in rough, and I tried to do what I could, but that little boy wouldn’t pay me a bit of mind.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MRS. MITCHELL: His name was Roger. (Laughter) I tried to rock him, and he just jumps out, just do everything and look at me so hateful and mean. Where he got all the junk from, I don’t know. Well, when he got where he could walk and get around, he would get out of my way because I would’ve spanked him, but he would let me catch him. He would walk out in the yard and just talk about me – “I’m going to need to fire you anyway. You ain’t no good. You are this. You are that.” Poor little Tommy would be out there with him, and Tom was just about as sweet as he could be. Ms. Clary said, “I just don’t know what to do about them.” I said to leave him alone. I said, “I’m going to do my work. He can stay out there in the yard all day. If he wants to stay out there in the hot and holler and fuss, let him stay out there. I’m going to stay in the house where it’s cool and do the work.” I did, and he stayed out there and fussed. Tommy would try to stay out there with him. He would come in and look at the TV. He just wouldn’t do nothing. Roger wouldn’t do nothing right. He seems like he is a sweet as can be now. He will tell me sometimes, “Parlee, I sure am sorry I treated you like I did.” I said, “I don’t know whether you’re sorry or not.” Next time – here she comes sticking out here and comes a little girl. She was a pretty little girl, just as sweet as she could be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her name?
MRS. MITCHELL: Her name was Ann. Ann was her name. (Laughter) I said, “Well, I tried.” I could tell she was going to be a little bit different from Tom, and she wasn’t going to be quite as bad as Roger. She was in the middle of them. I would tell her to do something or not to do something, and, “My daddy said I could do it.” I said, “That don’t sound right. Mr. Clary didn’t tell her she could do that.” That’s how she got away with everything. And her daddy told her she could do it. Her daddy told her she could cook, and I said, “Mr. Clary didn’t have no business telling her she could cook. She couldn’t cook.” She would get up there and cook an egg. One day, she got up there to cook every eye on the stove turned on and couldn’t cut off. Now, call Daddy then “Daddy, I got all the eyes on and I can’t cut them off.” Mr. Clary was so nice. Mr. Clary was just as sweet as he could be. He said, “Baby, you get down out of that chair, and pull that chair back from the stove. You get back from the stove.” She did that. He come in – “Parlee.” I said, “Yes sir.” He’d say, “Ann is up there scared. She done got all the eyes on the stove cut on and can’t cut them off. Will you just stop working down here and come on and go out there and stay with her?” I wanted to go up there and whoop her. I said, “If they don’t whoop the children, I won’t either. I just let them go on.” I know if they had been mine [inaudible]. I went on, and she standing there with her eyes shining. When he got there and came on in. He’s just as nice as he could be. He went on and patted her and hugged her and turned off every eye on the stove. “Well, I’m going back to the store. Parlee, I don’t guess anything else happened. If anything happens, just let me know.” I said to myself I would sure let him know because I might whoop this little girl and have to call you to tell me to get me off her. (Laughter) That went on. I guess that was the biggest thing about them. Everything she would do – I would tell her something that I knew she wasn’t supposed to do. She would always tell me her daddy says she can do it. That’s the big thing about her – “Daddy said I could.” She will laugh about it now because she had a lot of things that Daddy didn’t tell her that she went on and did. She knew she could get away with it because she told me her daddy said. I know he was the boss, and he was supposed to tell her right from wrong. One time she be going through a fuss, and Mr. Clary didn’t tell her nothing. He didn’t tell her to do nothing. “Yes, he did tell me I could do it.” She’d bush up on herself like she is going to whoop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work for the Clarys solely for them? Were you working for somebody else over the years?
MRS. MITCHELL: Over the years, I worked for different ones. I worked for Mr. Clary – after we ever got that store, every chance I would work in the store. After just starting to work, I started working one day a week with free on Friday. I would work for the Pries. Do you know the Pries?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: I would work for them on a Wednesday. I worked for the Cams on Tuesdays at half a day. Do you know that Cams? I bet you don’t know them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t know them.
MRS. MITCHELL: They sold the farmers lot. He got passed away, but she still living. I worked for a lot of people maybe once or twice because some of the people I didn’t like. People I didn’t like, I didn’t work for them. I worked for one – how old are you? It might’ve been you did that. I worked for a woman one day, and I went to work in the morning and she was in the kitchen. I said, “What can I start on?” She said, “I guess you can start in the bathroom.” I walked in the bathroom and I didn’t see a thing. I went back to her and said, “Where was all the cleaning stuff?” She said, “Parlee, I don’t have nothing but that piece of soap in there.” She had half a bar of P & G soap lying in the bathroom for me to clean the bathroom. I said, “Is this what you clean the bathroom with?” She said, “Yeah, that’s all I clean with.” That’s all she had, okay. I got my mopping thing. I just went on and washed it. The next week I went there, and she’s there. This one is going to be new what I’m going to say now. She said, “My husband said – when he went in the bathroom, a piece of hair was lying in the face bowl.” I said, “A piece of hair lying in the face bowl?” It could’ve been her hair or the children’s hair. It could’ve been mine. I don’t I was it was. I know I did the no hair when I was in there cleaning. I said to myself, “I won’t be back here. He can clean his own hair out of his face bowl.” That’s why said it might’ve been you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It wasn’t me. Tell me about what the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your lifetime.
MRS. MITCHELL: In my lifetime, the most amazing thing – it was the washing machine. There are TVs and all this kind of stuff that they started to bring in. Electric lights – that was a big thing, electricity was a big thing when it come in. It was a long time before I could get a lot of the electric stuff, but still I always thought I’d like the electric irons and all that stuff and electric cookers and all that stuff. That’s just all amazing to me. Now when the electric iron came in, oh goodness. We had to set those old irons to the fire and then it would take them so long to get hot. Then you had to clean them and clean them. All the white shirts, those men’s shirts. We were glad when the electric iron came in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you still cook a lot today?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You’ve had enough cooking then?
MRS. MITCHELL: Flynn come by to see me yesterday, and I know he’s going to look for something to eat. I told him – I looked at him and said, “I don’t cook like I used to.” It wasn’t long before he said, “I’ll be back.” Every time he comes to my house he don’t live here, he is visiting and his daughter was sick. Had her kidney replaced. So he was here to see her. He got up and left. I said, “He’s going to get himself some meat because I done told him I wasn’t cooking.” He jumped up and said he’d be back. I told him I don’t cook. There was a time though when I would’ve gone up in the kitchen and cooked something. He would always eat. I had two friends come in – my grandchildren’s daddy. He comes in, and they don’t eat. He came in one night, and I had three little fish is that I had to fry. I was going to eat one and asked if he wanted one. He said, “That sound good. I’ll eat them.” He came in here and ate my little fish, and I didn’t have no supper. All my people are like that. Everybody likes to come to my house. They know they’re going to get food. My kids were down for Thanksgiving, they come from Grand Rapids, Michigan. My daughter got up in the morning. She was so busy to come take me, I think she had just seven biscuit. I just looked at her and turned my head. I’d make big things that come with the stoves, just full of biscuits. She called me back and still tells me about all that eating she did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All the time you lived in Oak Ridge, have you felt safe living in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. That’s one thing. I might be running in talking about this and then the other thing. That don’t bother me. I don’t think about the plants and places like that. I just put all that in the hands of the Lord. That’s just the way I am. I go down on my knees to pray at night, and everything – I fix it with Him because he’s the boss man. There’s nothing I could do about this. I just tell Him about it and ask him how to take care of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the most historical event that you have seen in your lifetime? What would that be?
MRS. MITCHELL: I’m trying to think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything related to the civil rights movement?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, I guess the president would be it – and all that civil rights stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Our president today?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, because all that civil rights stuff – I didn’t bother about that. I put it all in the hands of the Lord and asked Him to take care of it. Whatever is going on around me, I always ask the Lord to take care of it. He’s the one who can fix things better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is your husband deceased?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, he died. He passed away in 1996. It’s funny how that works. In 1969, we bought our house. We moved into our house. Then in 1996 he passed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Are all your children living today?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where are they located?
MRS. MITCHELL: I have three in Grand Rapids, Michigan; one in Detroit; and the rest of them just around here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many grandchildren do you have?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t know. I couldn’t count. I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren – good gracious, I tell them to get out of here and get going.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What advice would you give young people today?
MRS. MITCHELL: The advice I would give young people today is to try to live right. That’s the main thing. Try to work on your good living. Don’t steal, don’t cheat. Try to do the best you can. If you do the best you can, the Lord will take care of the rest. That’s the way I see that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What you like or dislike about Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I know a lot is going on that I don’t like, but I’ll let that go ahead. I see so much right is wrong, and I see so much wrong that wasn’t going on in the city when I was here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you have a nickname that I’ve heard people call you. What is that?
MRS. MITCHELL: (Laughter) That must be Big Mama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you ever get the name Big Mama?
MRS. MITCHELL: From my grandkids. All the children that run with my grandkids, they say Big Mama, too. That’s how I did it. Kids I don’t even know run down here, “High, Big Mama.” I say, “Hi, Baby.” I don’t know who they are, but they know I’m Big Mama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You have a reputation if you want to call it that over in your community that people respect you quite highly. How did you become that type of an icon?
MRS. MITCHELL: All I can say is it’s just the way I live. It’s different from the way so many people over their lives. That’s really what goes on. Some of those folks up there cutting up and going on. I don’t do those things. I didn’t want to hear them. They get started, and I go on about my business because I don’t deal with all that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve heard stories about where young boys or girls may be acting up and someone says your name or you might speak to them, and they straighten up.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, they do that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why do you think they do that?
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s the respect they have for me. They know I don’t do that. I stay on them about that. That’s the respect I get from them. It’s good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t guess. Trying to think of anything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is your involvement with your church now? What do you do with the church?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t do much. I’m just one of the mothers we have. That’s why I can stay so strict on them. That’s what us mothers are supposed to do – talk to the young people and try to tell them right from wrong. Nowadays, I don’t think they listen. They go around the corner do anything they want to. Children nowadays just don’t respect people like they did back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mrs. Mitchell, it’s been a pleasure and a history learning for me to interview you. This oral history that you have given us today will be I think a valuable asset in the history of Oak Ridge. Hopefully, our future generations will pull up your oral history and see how life was and realize that things today are quite different than when you first got here. I thank you very much for your time.
MRS. MITCHELL: Okay, it’s good to come in and do it for you. I said sometimes I wasn’t going to do it, but then I said I would think about. It’s something they can talk about after I’m gone. They can pick up a paper and read some of the stuff.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF PARLEE MITCHELL
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 4, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 4, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mrs. Parlee Mitchell about living in Oak Ridge. Mrs. Mitchell, please state your name, place of birth, and date.
MRS. MITCHELL: My name is Parlee Mitchell. I was born in December 1919.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you born?
MRS. MITCHELL: Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My father was named George Howe.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was he born?
MRS. MITCHELL: He was also born in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother’s maiden name?
MRS. MITCHELL: Her name was Verget Noland.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Her place of birth?
MRS. MITCHELL: Aberdeen, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your father’s school history?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I know he went, but I can’t recall what he went for. I heard him talk about it, but it was there also in Aberdeen, Mississippi. I don’t know – it wasn’t out in no other state.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s schooling?
MRS. MITCHELL: You know, I didn’t hear my mother talked too much about school. I really don’t know whether she went at all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, yes, on my father’s side.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were their names?
MRS. MITCHELL: George Howe – he was named after his daddy. He was the oldest one. Charlie Howe – we have a nickname for those kids. That’s why I am taking my time trying to think of their real names.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were their nicknames?
MRS. MITCHELL: I’m trying to think of my sister, her name. We called her Sister, but I can’t think of her name. Mary was one of them, but she is not the oldest one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe it will come back to you as we go on. What type of work did your father do?
MRS. MITCHELL: He farmed. He was a farmer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of crops did he grow?
MRS. MITCHELL: He grew cotton, corn, and then just vegetables. Tomatoes, peas, potatoes and all kinds of vegetables. He did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work other than taking care of the children, did she work any?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, she didn’t never have to.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live? Where do you first remember living?
MRS. MITCHELL: I first remember living with my grandfather. That was Frank Noland.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: That was in Aberdeen, Mississippi. You know, he lived there just as long as I knew him. When he passed away, he passed away in that old house – I remember when I was a child.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would you describe the house to me, what it looked like?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was just an old common wood house, nothing fancy, like houses nowadays. I go back home nowadays and want to go see the old places where I used to travel, and I don’t know them anymore. I say, “Whose house did you say that was?” She says, “That’s where Willie B. Howe used to live.” That ain’t the old house I remember. They have all these fancy houses sitting out on the side of the road. I don’t even know who lived there. I passed right by somebody I know and don’t even know it. Everything back in those days, you know, was just these old wood houses, half of them are about to fall down. They had to patch them up and keep them going like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the house have screens on the windows?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, not unless you got out there and put them up yourself. Some places people would do that, but not too many. We would have to fight the flies and the bugs and the things like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many people lived in the house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, in the house, let me see. My grandfather, my grandmother, three grandkids, and me and my mother at the time; but we didn’t live there too long before we got out. Our little house wasn’t too far from his house. Me and my mother lived in that little house – wasn’t anybody in it. So, we lived there. We just help them share crop – go down and do what needed to be done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the house have running water inside?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, no. Back in those days, some of these had were the water run the whole time. I can’t think of what it’s called, but I guess you know what I’m talking about. Every once in a while you see one now when you go through different places. I say, “Oh, there’s a well we used to have.” It was a long trough there at this well, and you could set your milk in there. Do you remember those lasso buckets? That’s where we kept our milk. We set the milk in those, and it stayed cool all the time. No refrigerators.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the house heated?
MRS. MITCHELL: You had to cut your wood. At spring time and times when they wasn’t any in the field during the crops, they would be in the woods cutting the wood. At night when we would go to bed, they would light these big old logs. We called that a back stick. Roll it back in there, and that thing would keep the fire all night long. In the morning, they would get up and just put the kindling in the front of it, and then put the other one over. It would not be long before we had a good hot fire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the house warm in the wintertime?
MRS. MITCHELL: If you keep your fire going. If you didn’t, it would get real cold. That’s when you put that big back stick down there. It would hold heat in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have electricity in your house?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, no. My grandmother and her friends always get together and they made quilts. They would make quilts, and that’s what we would sleep on at night. We would say, “Mama, we think we need another quilt tonight. It’s real cold.” She would go get another one and put it on the bed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The beds – were these feather beds? What type of beds were these?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of them were feather bed. My grandmother had a nice feather bed. They would get in there, and you would see them sinking down. Our beds would mostly be some kind of soft straw you could pull and fix. They make a big tick out of the fertilizer sacks. You would push all that dry grass in there. Boy, was it nice the first when we would do that for the winter, and when you jump in there, it would sink down. Shoot, we would be warm in there. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like snug as a bug in a rug? (Laugher)
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m sure the house didn’t have indoor plumbing, did it? Did you have to go outside and use the bathroom?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That would be kind of rough in the winter, especially when it was real cold.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. But you heard of those slop jars, those chambers and things like that. We had plenty of them in the house. We didn’t go out too much at night. Every morning we had to throw all that out. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend school during that time?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some, not too much. The weather was too bad. We lived a long ways from school. When I was sort of little, first grade, I didn’t hardly get no further than the first grade. I think I got just ready for the third when my school was ending. We had to get up in the morning in the cold and get ready to walk to school. Our hands would be so cold. I hate to go back to those old days, but that’s how it was. We had to walk to school and walked back – carry our lunch to school in an old bucket. It would be so cold sometimes they would be frozen, but that’s what we had to eat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about when you went to school? How was the school setting?
MRS. MITCHELL: Now, the school setting – it was just one building. So many classes would sit may be here, and they would call for us primer, first grade, second grade. And that was the way it was. Everybody would know when to get up. They knew where they were. We might’ve had to sit together sometimes. Still, we knew when they would call our class, they could get up in different places and go to the class because we would go up and stand in line with certain teachers. We had two teachers. The assistant teacher would teach us young kids, and the older teacher would teach the older kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of the types of classes you had?
MRS. MITCHELL: They called that primer – that was the first one. Then it was the first grade. And then second grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Reading, writing, and arithmetic?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, I remember Crowell Howe. He was my teacher. When I was a little bitty child, I would say George Howe was my teacher, because I lived around with my people a lot when I was young. I lived with my grandfather. He was the first. Then after I left my grandfather, I went to one of my cousins houses and stayed with him. I got to tell a story about him.
I loved him to death. He had two brothers – Johnny Howe was the one I stayed with. I guess I was about three, I reckon. I stayed with him. Then he had a brother by the name of Andrew Howe. Andrew Howe was his baby brother. He stayed with Johnny Howe also when I stayed with Johnny Howe, but I was just a little child. He had another brother – the older brother was named Pratt Howe, but he just lived across the ditch from us. I just love them all to death because they just spoiled me to death. One day I would always jump up and my Cousin Johnny’s house where I lived. He dipped snuff. He had that old toothpick just rolling in his mouth. You done seen people dip snuff?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MRS. MITCHELL: He would know that I wanted some of that, but he wouldn’t give me any. So one day I got to playing. He says, “Hey, Baby. Come here.” I ran. He picked me up and sat me up in his lap like a little proud thing. He said, “I’m going to let you have some of this.” I said, “Okay.” He got that snuff. He got that toothbrush and tapped it to my tongue. I said, “That good.”
After a while, I started feeling funny. (Laughter) Now, this is too funny to try to tell. He said, “What’s wrong, Baby?” I said, “Let me down.” He let me down. You remember how when those old people use to hide things like them old wash tubs sitting under the house in the water with the drain had a leak in it. I went to this old washtub, and I washed my face. He was watching me because he knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t know. He came to the corner of the house and I was at the washtub just washing my face. He said, “Baby, what’s wrong?” I said, “I’m sick, I’m sick.” I was just crying. He said, “Come here.” I went to him. He wiped my little face and he picked me up and rocked me and rocked and rocked me. I didn’t go to sleep. I was laying up there sick off of that snuff. I just laid on that sofa. He took up all the time he could with me to get me straight. He said, “Now Baby, you know what?” I said, “What Cousin Johnny?” He said, “You never are going to dip snuff. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I’m just turning you against snuff because I seeing you are going to be a snuffer, but you are not ever going to dip in the snuff.” I said, “I sure ain’t! I sure ain’t!” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever dip snuff?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I never did none of that. That was the end of that. Then I looked at him so funny he thought that I thought he had mistreated me. He just came and picked me up and patted me on the back. He said, “I still love you." I looked at him and I wouldn’t act like I thought he still loved me because he did that, you see. Me and him finally got back friends. (Laughter) He told my cousin when he come, my Cousin Andrew, “Johnny, you shouldn’t have treated her like that.” He said, “Well, all I was doing is just making sure she will never be a snuff dipper. If I hadn’t did that to where she watched me, she would’ve been a snuff dipper. That’s broke up. She will never dip snuff.” That was the end of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned about sharecropping. Explain to me what a sharecropping farm is.
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s like – you might have a farm, and I come in, and you will say, “Well, do you want to farm?” I say, “I think so. I think I’d like farming.” He says, “I will tell you what. We’ll sharecrop.” I didn’t know what sharecropping was myself. I said, “What is that?” Well, share cropping, you could work it on halves in one way; work it in thirds in another way. But what it was – how you would work, they would take so much of it. If I’m working for you, I wouldn’t get all that since I was the sharecropper. You were getting more than I would. I would just get some. Maybe I would get a third of it and the halves – I would get half of it and you would get half of it. That’s how that works. I think that’s how me and my husband worked when we were doing that. You know, half and half.
Now, my grandfather and them, when they was working, I never did get too much out of that. How they did that. It wasn’t halves, and it seemed like it was in the third. I think the man like you had everything, and you were to furnish me what I needed. At the end of the crop times – and the money and stuff that came out of the crop I think that’s how that went – they shared the money together. I can remember that the money was shared, and my grandmother was going to kill my grandfather. (Laughter)
They would have this land up in the fall of the year when everything was over and everything is gathered. You would get your share, and they would get their share. She asked my grandfather where the money was. My grandfather said, “We didn’t clear anything.” A lot of us didn’t. Some did, and some didn’t. It’s just because of how much money you use through the year. She got up that morning and put on her clothes and went up to the boss man. She asked him, “Did Frank Noland collect any money?” The boss man told her – Dan Taylor told her, “Yes, what he cleared, I gave it to him.” He told her he didn’t clear any. Well, she came back. She was rough. She came back and got the shotgun. (Laughter) My mother said, “Daddy, Daddy, get up. Get up. Mama is fixing to kill you!” Daddy jumped up and she said, “I think it’s too late now.” She had the gun drawn. (Laughter) Some of the other kids ran in and knocked the gun back. He jumped up and got his clothes and ran out the door. Then she just walked and cried, walked and cried. I can remember that. She said, “I’m glad y’all took the gun because you would a had a dead daddy. He done lied to me and told me he didn’t clear anything and then Dan Taylor said he did.” So, they fought and fussed all day. I think he had to go get some money though to give her. I think that’s how it happened. I don’t know the details of that, but I think that gun wasn’t in the box. She had that shotgun, and she wasn’t playing. She was rough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she let him back into the house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. She let him back in. I think she laid on his soul and then cried because she was so glad that she didn’t. She would’ve been sorry afterward. And so, she cried around there for days about that. Anyway, she told him don’t lie to her no more. She said, “Just don’t lie to me. You don’t know who you’re fooling with. I will kill you. Just don’t lie to me.” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of crops did a sharecropper grow?
MRS. MITCHELL: He grew cotton and corn. That was the main thing. Now, most of the sharecroppers have their black-eyed peas and potatoes and stuff like that. The boss man didn’t hardly fool with that. That’s how we call them back in those days – the boss man. He didn’t fool with that stuff. He planted his, and we would plant ours as much as we wanted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about picking cotton. How do you do that?
MRS. MITCHELL: Get down and pick it. The cotton will come up, and it will grow, and we had to chop it and take care of it. After a while, it would bloom. After it bloomed, the buds would come on it. Then after the buds come on it, it would decide to open up at a certain time. But you give it time to fluff up and come out before you start picking it. Then you get that sack and put it around your neck, and starting putting it into it. I wasn’t too much of a cotton picker. Some people could pick 300 a day. I did every once in a while, I would pick 100 a day, but I wasn’t going to do those 200 or 300 things. I’d pick what I could.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you used to talk about 100 and 300, what is that? Is that the weight of the cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. That’s the weight of the cotton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that pounds? 100 pounds, 300 pounds?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. You’re pulling a long sack behind you. When it got too heavy, you go empty it out. You had your spot to pick your cotton, and another fellow had his spot to pick his cotton. And then sometime in the big farm, and a lot of people were picking, what they would do to keep them coming in was a man at the scales because some sacks will be coming in and coming in. There would be a lot of them. So every time he’d see a sack coming in, he would jump up and pick up a scale and weigh it, and write your name down. Write how much you done picked down. At the evening time when quitting time comes, they would tell every fellow how much they got.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how much money you made for picking cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: Let me see, how much was it? Seemed like it was – I’m trying to think now and get that straighten it out. Surely, it wasn’t more than 100, but it seemed like it was $1. It looked like it was more than that. Some people were paid more than others anyway. I’m pretty sure it was $2 for 100.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At what age do children start picking cotton in the fields with their families?
MRS. MITCHELL: A baby can pick. They come out [baby noises] there and be just picking. (Laughter) Some of it, they be putting on the bud before it be ready – “No, Baby, you can't pull that out.” [baby noises] (Laughter) They would fuss. But a 10-pound sack of flour – I know you never heard of that. It used to be in sacks, not in paper bags. It was in cloth. So we would make little sacks for our babies. We put it around our neck, and then put cotton in it. We thought we were doing something then. Couldn’t tell us a thing. We’d be out there just picking. I remember when I was a baby, a little ol’ thing. I would be out there just picking. And don’t let us get a sack full. Say, “Come on, Baby.” “No.” We want to get the sack further. When we get a sack full, then we could empty them. And then we’d want them to weight it. They were weighing their big sacks. We wanted to hang our little one up there and weigh it too. They’d hang it up there like they were weighing it. I think about it now, they weren’t weighing it because there wasn’t enough to weigh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So the whole family went to the cotton field to pick cotton.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, most of the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about when you had an infant child that wasn’t able to pick cotton? Who looked after them and where did they stay?
MRS. MITCHELL: Now, sometimes we had to take those guys to the field. You hear me talking about these quilts and things we had. We took one of them and find a tree or cotton or corn, and put it there and put that child under it, and let the other little ones stay there with him and take care.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about food? What did you take with you to eat while you were picking cotton?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was always be one to come home and fix dinner – if the older person was there. Now, some places, the older people would be there, like my grandmother or something. She might just go ahead on and cook. Most of the time, she would work, too. But we had a quitting time – maybe at 10 o’clock or 10:30. She had to cook. She would leave the field and go home and cook. We would keep on working until we thought dinner was fixed up. Then we would go to the house and wash up, clean up. It wouldn’t be long before she said it was ready – “Go on in and eat.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you start at daylight and quit at dark?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, certain things we did. Now chopping, we didn’t do that. Cotton, we did that because we wanted to get a lot of time. But chopping we didn’t go out early. One thing about it – we had to stop. We had to milk the cows and get all that stuff before we could go to the field. That’s what we would be doing by daylight –milking the cows, getting all the milk and stuff fixed up, put it in this long trough I was talking about that we had. We had to do all that first. The men-folk could go on before we did because they didn’t do that. We did it mostly. If they milked, they would bring the milk and just set it down. The parents would have to always take care of that and put it where it’s supposed to be put. Stuff like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did your family get other food other than out of the fields? Did they go to the store?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. They would go to the store for groceries maybe, I would say, once a month back in those days. The way they would go is they would hook the mules up to the wagon because there wasn’t that many cars. We didn’t have any. They would go to town, and they would come back with the load. Now, most of the things we bought was sugar and coffee and flour. We raised our own corn. We raised our own meat. We raised all the vegetables, peas, potatoes, and all that stuff. Then we canned. We had big orchards of fruit. I could look back and see those days. My grandmother and them would can, can, can. Well, all that we didn’t have to buy. Like I said, we killed the hogs. We had our meat and we had our lard and stuff like that. It was the biggest thing. And like I said, we would go get that. You could buy flour by the bag. We would buy big old bags of flour. It would last a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any pets like cats or dogs?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any favorite cat or dog?
MRS. MITCHELL: All of them were our favorite. We had one named Blue, and my grandfather would go out at night and say, “Go get him, Blue!” Blue would go out and find a possum. We loved possums. We would eat them for dinner. (Laughter) Back in those days, I didn’t know any better. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother make your clothes?
MRS. MITCHELL: Back in those days, when the winter and fall would come in, they were all shipping in the material that would come into town. We lived in Aberdeen at that time. All of the material– the linen, outing, print, corduroys – all kinds of material would be shipped in. It was a certain time at the end of the fall for the year. It would get cold. They would go to town and buy all that stuff, and they would come back and start sewing.
Back in those days, the girls wore dresses. They didn’t wear what they are all wearing now. They wore dresses, and they first better be covered up with those dresses. Wasn’t no half naked going around back in those days. The boys wore overalls. I don’t remember blue jeans and things back in those days. They would be overalls. Do you know how – my grandmother and most of them would know how to sew them. They would get material and make overalls and little suspenders, and put them hooks on them and everything and fix them up. They would make us dresses. They would make us coats, sweaters, and things like that. Not too much of stuff like that we would buy. They would go and make that stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they teach you how to sew?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, a little bit. They taught me, but I didn’t keep it up. I’d see stuff start to come in, and you could go buy it. They got to where they didn’t want to wear those made clothes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of shoes did you wear?
MRS. MITCHELL: You could go and get shoes sort of like you do now. Lace-up high tops.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Lace up type shoes?
MRS. MITCHELL: You’d lace them up. They had them for boys and for girls. So that’s what we wore to school. We had to wear them out in the cold snow and stuff. We had to wear them shoes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family attend church when you were growing up?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. That’s why I got my church after going with my family. They just said the old things. What I used to do, I don’t do no more because I didn’t come up to do it. We lived it like good girls and good boys back in those days.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned you had a mule and wagon. Is that how the family got to church and every other place they wanted to go?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Sunday morning, Saturday – get out there and clean up that old wagon, wash it up, clean up all the mules and what they had to wear in the field, have them shine up. My grandpa was good on that. He’d call the boys and say, “Clean up these gears and things for Sunday.” They’d clean up all that. They’d get the wagon all swept out and everything, washed out if it needed. It would be clean. We would be clean. We would go to the church where the clean house was and serve the Lord.
We had to cross a creek once. I don’t know what was wrong with those people. The bridge sort of got raggedy, and the mules was scared. They were afraid, they were going to fall in, and we was afraid we were going to fall in. We got on that old bridge that morning, and the mules started snorting and backing up. One of the wheels slipped off and went like it was going in the creek. We started hollering and crying. They said, “Be quiet. We are going to make it.” And we pulled it out, and we got back home. They took them so long before they ever fixed the bridge. Every Sunday when we got to that bridge, we let the driver go across, and we’d get out and walk across. The driver had to stop on the other side of that bridge and let us get back on. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you wear special clothes for Sunday that you didn’t wear through the week?
MRS. MITCHELL: Oh, yes. We had our little church clothes. We didn’t wear our little church clothes through the week. We would be clean. Our parents believed in cleanliness. And my grandmother – she was a seamstress. As I said, when they go in and buy that material, she wouldn’t just go get a piece of cloth. They would get a lot of cloth. She would come in and make me sew for about two weeks, getting everybody’s clothes together. We thought we were so cute in them little cute new clothes, you know. We wasn’t going in the field then. We was going to church to serve the Lord.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were there neighborhood kids you played with? Or did you play with your own family most of the time?
MRS. MITCHELL: There were a few neighborhood kids – just a few of us could get together every once in a while. It wasn’t everyday stuff because folks was working and keeping the kids at the house and watching over them, making them do the right thing. I had one little friend – two little friends I would play with. We would get together and play sometimes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of games would you play?
MRS. MITCHELL: We would play Hide and Go Seek, and we’d play with dolls. I guess you might have read, I don’t know if you read that one line about how we used to make our own dolls. And we would play dolls and had doll houses. We would make trees and sit over here, where we would have dolls. We would meet together over there in them trees and just sit and visit and have the dolls talking just like they were visiting. We would have fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your doll made out of?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of them were made out of a cotton ball when we could steal a cotton ball and make a head out of it. We would fix the head like that, and then we dot it with a pencil. We would make the little eyes by dot it with the pencil. Then if we wanted the rough skirt or something like that, we might get some corn shucks you know and fix them or something and make it like that. They would be so cute, and then we would name the dolls different names. They would go visit different houses. My doll house was sitting over here, and my auntie’s doll house was sitting over there, and we would visit each other like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the first job that you got other than outside the farm.
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, the first job I got was at that home – I should have brought one of my papers with me. What kind of home was it?
MR. HUNNICUTT: A nursing home? Like a nursing home?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was an old people’s home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We call it a nursing home, today. Old people’s homes, in those days.
MRS. MITCHELL: Right. It was something about the county. It was a county home. They county was taking care of it. I never liked that. It was good people. I started working there, and they all called me “Cook” there. I was the cook. “Hey, Cook – can I have so and so?” Sometimes I’d say, “We’re going to have to ask Miss Brown about that. I don’t know if you can have it.” I knew how far I could go with things, but I had to run it past Miss Brown – “Mr. so and so back here wants some things.” She would come in. She was nice. They was nice people. She’d have a talk with me. She’s say sometimes, “Parlee, if they come to the door and want something like that, you can let them have it.” I’d say, “Okay, I’ll do that.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think I read where your mother was in this particular old folk’s home.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. My mother was in that home. I didn’t bring that up. My mother was in that home twice, because that’s where my mother was when I stayed with this Johnny that gave me snuff. I was just a little child. She was there then in that home because me and her were staying with my grandfather at that time. She got so down and wasn’t able, needed all this medicine and stuff. They just sent her to that home. When she first got out of that home, I went back to stay with my grandfather and we pretty much just stayed with my grandfather. But anyway, she was in that place twice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Am I right that your grandfather and grandmother helped you with some schooling along the way when you stayed with them?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, my dad started out with us because like you said my dad went to school. He knew a good much in schooling. He said, “Since they can't go, I’m going to teach them at home.” My grandpa said, “Well, alright.” There weren’t all these different kind of rooms then. We had one big fireplace, and my daddy sat over in the corner, and my grandmother sat in the corner, and my grandfather sat in the middle. He was very quiet, my grandfather was. Anyway, my daddy started out, and we started pretty good with him – until it got pretty rough. We didn’t know. Then my daddy got mad, and we started fussing on him. We didn’t know that much – first grade, second grade. We never put together. The grades went up. We didn’t know anything about it. He would get mad with us because we weren’t interested enough in it. He decided he was going to whoop us. Grandpa said – my grandpa didn’t talk – he said, “Wait a minute. If these kids don’t want to learn, there’s not going to be no whooping.” Grandma raised up over that. She said, “Sure ain’t. It’s not in the whoopings. We don’t mind you teaching if they want to listen. But if they get to where they don’t want to listen, just let them go. They’ll learn the best they can.” So there wasn’t no whooping. We went on. We learned pretty good. We had to learn things. We learned by others – what they were doing, how they acted, how they did. But one thing we had to do was go to church. We didn’t mind. We learned. It got to where we loved to go to church. Sundays we couldn’t go to church with those old dolls we had, we had a church out in the woods. We would go to church and take our dolls with us. We would sing and pray. We would shout. We would cry. We would get happy, just like we were at real church. We had real church. We would go out of the house, and we had an auntie. We called her Adele. She said, “What’s wrong with y’all?” We done had a good time. She said, “Next Sunday, I’m going to church with y’all.” (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you got this first job at the old folks home?
MRS. MITCHELL: I guess I was about 19. I think I was 19.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get from where you lived to the old folks home each day?
MRS. MITCHELL: I stayed there. See, my mother stayed there. Since my mother stayed there, me and my mother shared the house. I stayed in the house where she stayed. She had two – it was three of them that had lived in this house, her and two blind men. That’s how they would do it. The blind men and the blind women – it didn’t matter which one. They would put one in there that could see so they could help take care of the blind. They were real nice. One sit in the corner and he sung and prayed all day. I enjoyed him. He just sat over there and prayed, prayed, prayed. Anyway, that’s how I got there. Every morning I would get up. We had to go out and make breakfast. She got up, too – the lady that kept the house. Me and her fixed breakfast together. She made the biscuits. I fried the meats – bacon and the sausage, and made the gravy. When we’d all get done, we had – we called it the mess hall. They were long, like that county over there. They were a little bit longer, and they would come to the mess halls to eat. We would get breakfast done, we rang a bell, and we’d go outside and ring the bell. They all would come to eat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who paid? Did the people in the old folks home have to pay to be there?
MRS. MITCHELL: No, the county paid for it, that’s why they called it the county home. It was something the country taken care of. They paid – the ones that were taking care of us and lived there, they paid them so much a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of dress did you wear clothes-wise when you worked at the home?
MRS. MITCHELL: Just common clothes –anything I had to wear. It wasn’t nothing you had to dress up all in white and in uniforms nothing like that. Just be clean. That’s all I was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was seven days a week.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Sundays and Saturdays – I was off on Sunday. Saturdays I would get off with a half a day and go to town that evening if I wanted to. The bosses and all – we would get ready and go to town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: During your off time, you went to town. What else did you do?
MRS. MITCHELL: That would be it. Town was a long way. When you went to town, you knew you were going to spend that time. You wouldn’t get home until the end of the night. What she did, she would give them supper. And then on the Sundays, she would feed them. I could go off to church if I wanted or go visit. The boss lady – she would give them their dinner and their supper.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You had to walk everywhere you went?
MRS. MITCHELL: If I didn’t get a ride. Sometimes I would ask him would he run me to church or would he run me somewhere – the boss man. Either way, she didn’t drive that much. He would.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The boss man had a car?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. They had cars. He would run me up to church. They had a son that comes on. That son seemed like he was my son. Everything I asked Charles to do, he would go do it. I said, “Charles, I’m going to run to a baptizing this evening right down the road here.” He know what a baptizing would be. He said, “Alright, I come and get you.” That day Charles just could never get there. And when he did come, he really drove. That’s when these new, big ol’ Chevrolet trucks come out with the big windows on the side. It was beautiful, and it was green. I said, “Here comes Charles.” We jumped in the car. Up the road, me and my cousin had better start walking. We jumped in the car. He run us right down the road to the baptizing. He run back because his mom and daddy were waiting on him, and I didn’t know that. We run back. When he run back, they got on him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me again who Charles was.
MRS. MITCHELL: Charles was the Brown’s son. I would go see him when I go home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is his father the boss man?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, he was the one I started working for at the home. Charles – I believe he was about 4 years old when I started working for him. I still go see him, bless his ol’ heart. He’s so big now and fat. When I walked in, I started laughing. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your future husband?
MRS. MITCHELL: I met him there. It was a bunch of people lived down next to this place where I worked at. He found some people to work for him, and they moved over there. They come from Chickasaw County across in the prairie. You ever heard talk of the prairie?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: A lot of Army work, and stuff went on over there. They lived across from [inaudible]. But anyway, they got over there. Some of them were working for us. And then Mr. Brown needed a wedge chain to do some of his work. He told the boys to see if they could find anybody to come over there. They did. They had one to come. Well, they tried about two or three really to come. Different ones would come, and they’d stay a while and leave. They was married, and their wives would want them to come and the kids would be crying, didn’t know where their daddy was. They just finally gave up and went back. Then this single man comes – no, there was two single mans. One single man – I didn’t pay him no attention. He wanted to know – no, I wasn’t dating. Well, my husband come along.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My husband was named Clint. Did you see me and him in the paper?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: Me and him got together. We dated for a while, and we finally got married.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do on a date? Where did you go? What was a date like in those days?
MRS. MITCHELL: What was a date like? Oh, we’d go to town. I was already going to town, so we would go to town and shop and come back. He stayed down the road with some of the friends that had done moved over there. I lived there on the place that I was working at. So every morning he would come up and eat his breakfast. We’d get to feeding the other folks, and me and him would sit out and eat breakfast. He would milk the cows and feed the hogs. We had different jobs that they had to do until crop time came. Then he’d help in the field with the crops and all that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the date and where did you get married?
MRS. MITCHELL: We got married right there –at the county home out in the yard. It was really nice, a beautiful December day. Christmas day – beautiful.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: 1940. I think it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you got married, where did you first live?
MRS. MITCHELL: Let me back up on that. You know how the president vote for presidents or vote for anything you want to be?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MRS. MITCHELL: Did you vote to get to do this job? (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: Anyway, it was a voting thing. Mr. Brown and several men go to this big place where you voted – just like you’re voting for anything. He got beat that time. He had been there for three years, I believe. And the highest vote would get it. Boy, he come back and come talking about how he lost. I said, “You lost, Mr. Brown?” He said, “Yes, Parlee, I have to get out of here. The next man is going to take over.” I said, “Okay.” Me and Clint said we was going to get married. He said, “Parlee, you all still going to get married?” I said, “I guess we will. We thought we was going to still have a job.” He said, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do.” We were just like his children. He treated us like we was his children. He said, “I’m going to find a place to live, and the place that I’m going to find has to have two houses on it. I’m going to tell them I want a house for myself, and I want a house for my maids that was working for me now.” So they going go get married, and I got to have a house for them. He would go every day, looking for a place to stay and come back. “Parlee, I didn’t have no luck today. I didn’t found two houses. I found a whole lot of single, but not two.” The day he found two, he come in just like “Miss Parlee, I found two houses on the place.” I said, “Oh, did you? Good!” He said, “You getting married, and y’all going to stay with me. You’re going to be like my children.” They were so nice to us. I said, “Okay, we going to get married. You ain’t got to worry about that. We going to get married Christmas day out in the yard.” That tickled him. Some of my friends come in the wagons. They didn’t have a car. They come the long way, stayed down there for the wedding and all. Then they got ready and left. So we went on and got married. The first of the year – that’s when you had to get out of that place and let the other folks move in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This was the old folks home?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mm-hm. It was rough that day. I just cried because the man that got the place – he said, “We have all this bedding that’s fixed up.” I knew this man. He lived up there from my grandpa in the house. I said, “Mr. Marty West don't know what he got into. He already don’t know what he done.” I done tell him before I left home about Mr. West. I said “Some of the kids should help him.” Well, he finally got there. All the stuff Mr. Brown had bought since he been there, he just started to run it up. What it does – when a new one come in, he’s supposed to pay you for the stuff that you done bought and had there. He said he wasn’t going to pay him and just let it stay there. Mr. Brown said, “No, it’s not going to be like that.” So when this man come in the fire was just running up stuff, I was crying. It got on my nerves. I didn’t want to see all that stuff. He said – this man come in just raising Cain. He was cussing and going on. He said, “Why are you buying up stuff?” Said, “I’m buying it and get it out of your way so you can put your new stuff in here.” Well, he said, “I thought you were going to let this stay here.” He said, “I wasn’t going to let it stay here and just give it to you. You’re supposed to give me so much money for that.” About half of it was burned up. He told the man, “Well just stop burning. I’ll pay you what’s left here.” He said, “Then I had to bring some new stuff in.” Well, dark was coming. Night was coming. The new wasn’t there, and the old stuff was burned up. Well, later on that night, we saw some trucks coming in from Ambree, Mississippi. They were bringing in the new stuff he had to go up there and get and bring it here. They don’t know, but some of us was trying to help the stuff fixed up for the old folks to go to bed. Some of them old people was helpless, and they went to bed early. They were ready to go to bed. We finally got everything done, and got all the old stuff out of the way. We had to get your stuff out of the way that day. We couldn’t let it stay there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You and your husband got married and lived in the house next to the man that was …
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, Mr. Brown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He ran the old folks home, and he lost his job because he didn’t get reelected.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. That’s right. That’s how it was – just like the president losing their job. He lost his job because he didn’t get it. He always got elected, but he lost that year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you and your husband have children?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. We had children later on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your first child’s name?
MRS. MITCHELL: My first child was named Virga Mae. Next was Eloise. Next one Baby C. Next one Clint, Jr. I could go on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many children do you have in all?
MRS. MITCHELL: We have 11 in all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You and your family came to Oak Ridge. Why did you come to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Some of his people moved from Chickasaw County up here and got a job, and they visited us. They would come over on our side and see us. They was talking about the nice jobs up here you could work. So my husband decided he would come up here and try it. He came up here and worked a while. He liked it. He came back, and I guess we stayed down there about a year. What he did – he stopped fooling with his farm and got to doing day work. There was a little plant that moved down there over at Prairian. He started working over there. The boss man told him one day – Mr. Brown said, “Clint, seemed like you were just leaving me.” He’d have day work for Clint to do around the house, and he would want the day work done. Clint would be gone off to his job. So he said one day, “I think that this house is going to be Clint’s. You got a job. I think I have to have somebody else to stay in this house to help me out.” I told him okay. Clint went right up the road and asked the man about his house, and he told him he could have it. This man and all this –everybody there was friends. This man asked Mr. Brown was it okay. “What’s wrong with you all down there, Mr. Brown? Clint asked me if he could rent that house up there. I told him yes. Is it okay with you, Mr. Brown?” He told him, “Yeah, it’s fine with me. I told him I needed my house to get somebody to help me out. He told me okay. I didn’t know where he was going to get a house. So he asked you. Let him come on up there.” We went up there and stayed with this man on his property. Everything I wanted and needed – I come back down to Clyde Burrows where I lived.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You said your husband came to Oak Ridge. He got a job while he was up here, or did he just come to visit?
MRS. MITCHELL: He come up here. He mostly was coming to visit, but they told him about this job. He came back home and worked there a while, and then the boss told him – wrote a letter and told him he could come on. This place was open, and he could get started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. And then he came back to Oak Ridge and got started. Then after he got a job again, he decided to move his family up here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of job did he get at Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: He worked at K-25. As far as what he’s done, I don’t know. That’s what he started with. I think it was K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He got a job at K-25, and then he moved you and the rest of the family to Oak Ridge. Where did you first live in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I lived at 281 S. Benedict.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house was that?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was a house like two apartments – one on each end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like duplex type house?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the house fairly new?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. The unit wasn’t an old and broke down either. It was nice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the year that you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I did. I can’t think now. It was 1953.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you first got to Oak Ridge and got your household established anything about it now, how was life different when you left Mississippi and when you came to Oak Ridge? Did you see a big difference in the two places?
MRS. MITCHELL: To tell the truth about it, we just got here and got jobs and went to work. That was all about it. I missed home and I missed Mississippi. I would go home regular because I had a sister-in-law down there that I just loved. Clint had a sister down there. I would love to go down there and visit sometimes. I would go down there sometime and stayed two weeks visiting after these kids grew up. They could take care of themselves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a car?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get back and forth to Mississippi?
MRS. MITCHELL: I rode the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you have to go to get the bus in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: To the bus stop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the name of the neighborhood where you first moved in Oak Ridge? What did they call that area over there?
MRS. MITCHELL: Scarboro.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it called Scarboro when you first came?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was Gamble Valley and then Scarboro. The name started out Gamble Valley. I think that’s what the name was, but they changed it to Scarboro.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was originally a trailer park there in the early days.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, once. I wasn’t here in those days. When I lived, it was just like it is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Over in Scarboro community, did you have grocery stores and items like that over there?
MRS. MITCHELL: There was one there when I first came. We shopped at it a lot. It was just right down the street from there. I could go out there and get our meats, good meats there, and flour, milk. It was just like a grocery. You could go down there and get what you needed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a school for your children to attend?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Where I live now, the school is right across from my house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mrs. Mitchell, describe the duplex house you lived in when you first came to Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: It had two bedrooms and it – a living room and two bedrooms, a kitchen, and one bath.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many people lived in the house at this time?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was me and my husband and my mother. That was three – and I believe it was seven children. We didn’t have all the kids then. It was seven kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wow. Where did everyone sleep?
MRS. MITCHELL: (Laughter) Everywhere. I had to make beds. Me and my husband had a little small bedroom, and my mother and the girls had the big bedroom. The boys slept in the living room on the floor.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your children went to school over in the Scarboro community. How far away was the school from where you lived?
MRS. MITCHELL: It wasn’t that awful far. They could walk. Now, I lived right across from that school where they used to go to.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house you live in now?
MRS. MITCHELL: A split foyer with three levels.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were first living in Oak Ridge, did you go to work?
MRS. MITCHELL: I wasn’t here long before I went to work. There was plenty of work here back in those days. My husband – after he worked at that plant for a while, that place where he went, it just went. I don’t know what happened while he worked. Then he started working at the Alexander Hotel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did he do there?
MRS. MITCHELL: A bellhop. One day while he was there a man came in and spoke to him and everything, talking about they needed somebody did he know anybody could work for him. He said – we hadn’t been too long moved to then, “My wife would like to have a job.” He said, “You tell her about us and let us talk to her and see how she works for us.” So he came and told me about it. I got ready. I think I went over there and met them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was this at the Alexander?
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s where he worked at.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go when you went for your job interview?
MRS. MITCHELL: I just went to our house. When I went over there, it was the mother and the son and their daughter. It was the parents and their daughter. They had a little boy. I walked around and told him I could start working for him. I come to find out they didn’t live too far from me in Mississippi – just up in another town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their names?
MRS. MITCHELL: Gillams. They were Harry Gillams.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where they lived?
MRS. MITCHELL: They lived on Manhattan. What is that number?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Over in the Woodland area?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. It was on Manhattan not far from that store. You remember where that little store was?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Woodland Shopping Center.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. I could walk down there to that store. It was right up the hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get from your home to their home to work?
MRS. MITCHELL: Somebody else was working over there, and I would get a ride with them. Then if I didn’t do that, I could get the bus. Buses were running back in those days. I would ride one bus that would come by my house. I could catch it and right onto the bus and get another bus that went by over there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did you do when you went to their home?
MRS. MITCHELL: It was just housecleaning. It wasn’t nothing but housework – make the beds, vacuum, clean, dust, cook. I had to cook. I had to think about what I was going to cook every day. “Well, what is we going to cook today?” “Well, Parlee just think about it and just go on and cook it.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they ask you what type of groceries to bring in so you could cook for them?
MRS. MITCHELL: You know what? Since that store was right over there, they would keep most of the groceries. There was a store right down there, and they had a little boy. He loved to go to the store when he wanted to, I’ll say it like that. Sometimes I thought I was going have to whoop him before he would go. (Laughter) I said, “Mom and them want this thing for dinner today.” “Parlee, I ain’t going to no store today.” I said, “Yes you are.” “No, I am not.” I said, “We are going to see about that.” I would keep at him. “I’m going to tell my mom and dad you made me go to the store.” I said, “They said you would go. I’m going to tell them on you because you wouldn’t go.” He would go to the store and get what I needed. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they leave you money to buy groceries?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, they would leave the money. Or they would put it on their bill. He would go down there and pay it. They knew I was up there working for them. I imagine he made a play with the people. They let me have anything I needed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you are raising your family when you first came to Oak Ridge, describe how Christmas time was when you came to Oak Ridge. How was it at Christmas time?
MRS. MITCHELL: At Christmas time when I first came here that year – that was in November, wasn’t it? I believe it was in November. They were just fixing it – you know how they give you this stuff and give people baskets and all that. They just give them so much stuff. I didn’t have to worry about anything. They just gave us and gave us and gave us. Christmas time – here comes all this. We weren’t used to that. They would have all this stuff. Like they done now, you know. You know how they gather up all this stuff. Well me with all those kids, we had more than we could eat. It was real good. They would give you clothes, I had all those kids. They would bring me clothes. I had all those kids, and they would bring us clothes. It would be a lady that would may be come out and see what size they were and stuff like that. Then they would go back and they would just bring nice baskets and nice bags of clothes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were a child growing up, how was Christmas event?
MRS. MITCHELL: We got a stick of candy and a doll and one apple and one orange. That seemed to work, I guess. There wasn’t such a thing as eating fruits all through the year, like folks do now. When you would go to this town and get this stuff, the train would come in. We little children would just be having a fit. “There’s the train! There’s the train!” That little train, “Toot, toot.” [inaudible] we would be in our wagon, and the wagon – we would be clapping our hands so happy. You could smell that fruit. You didn’t smell fruit like that until Christmas time. Them trains of that done brought this stuff then and them doors would be open and that fruit would be coming all over town – you could smell them good apples, bananas, oranges. And they would be carrying it on their shoulder toting it to the store. It was something to see.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the story about Santa Claus – did they tell that the children and you were growing up?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. They couldn’t wait. They would go to bed too early at night waiting for Santa Claus to come. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever leave anything out for Santa Claus to eat?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, they would get up and get mad and say, “He tried to eat of all this cake. Look at this big bowl of chocolate.” (Laughter) They would be so mad about that. I told them I would cook another. “But we wanted that one.” They would be mad at Santa Claus. I’d say, “Well look what all he brought.” They’d say, “Yeah, but he ought to have brought that and went on. He didn’t have to eat the cake up.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you found out about Santa Claus – who the Santa Claus was – were you disappointed, or did it make any difference?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t guess it made any difference because I don’t remember nothing about it back in those days. It wasn’t anybody but me and my mother back in those days. Nobody put that out there, but her and her sister saying there was no Santa Claus. Some of the children would sit up and try to watch, and they seen for sure. They would come and tell me, “Didn’t nobody do that but your mama. We saw Daddy and Mama do that last night.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: The thrill of knowing about Santa Claus was something else.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, that was a big story about Santa Claus and how he did the children and all – they would be down looking [inaudible]. But the first time I [inaudible] I was with my Cousin Johnny. I remember – I heard something. I’m sitting up there and thinking [inaudible]. I heard something. I looked around and Santa Claus was crawling and coming up through that house, and that like to have been the death of me. They had a time trying. That scared me to death. I saw that thing coming and all that hair on his face and then he done turned sideways and looking up there at me. (Laughter)You talk about screaming and hollering, they never got me settled down. I don’t think I slept at night. I cried all night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about raising your family and working, too, in the early days of Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: My oldest daughter learned to cook in her early days. She was young, but she could cook because she learned to cook even at home. I guess she was about… I don’t know how old she was, but anyway so she did the cooking mostly. Maybe if it was something big, I might cook it earlier and eat it for dinner – the refrigerator when we got a refrigerator. Back at home, I never did get a refrigerator back in Mississippi. We could buy ice and we had ice boxes. Even now the people I lived with, it was a long time lived there in the home and before they got a refrigerator. I would get ice from them sometimes, but I never did get a refrigerator in Mississippi. I didn’t get one until my husband was working at the Alexander Hotel. We got one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you wash your clothes when you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: On the old rub board. I wash my clothes on the ironing board in Mississippi, and I washed on it when I got here. Did you read that paper? You didn’t read the paper, did you? About the first washing machine I got – you didn’t read that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about it.
MRS. MITCHELL: I shouldn’t tell you because he should’ve read the paper. (Laughter) You make me think you didn’t pay me no attention. (Laughter) One day I was down in the house and somebody knocked at my door. I looked, and it was a friend of mine. She was fixing to leave and go north, and she said, “Parlee, I come down here to tell you something. I have a washing machine. It’s an old ringer type. I come down here to ask you if you wanted it.” I said, “Yes, I want it.” She said, “You can have it. Something is going on about that washer, but I don’t know. I don’t care what nobody come here and say, you tell them that’s your washer because I give it to you.” So somebody else must have wanted that washing machine because she was acting rough about it. “It’s yours and we’re going to bring it down here.” They didn’t live too far from me. Her and her children got it and rolled it on down the hill, right on down the hill and guided it into my house and rolled it in there. She said “This is yours.” I hugged her and cried because what she had asked me about a TV – at least the question was asked about a TV. I told her I walked into the house and looked at the TV that day. My little girl was on there turning a flip. I looked at that, and my kids did that every day. I turned around and come on and went right back into the kitchen and did my work. I said, “It didn’t impress me at all.” TV didn’t impress me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the first time you saw TV?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mm-hm. I didn’t care. I went back in the house and started working at somebody’s house. I went on back and started to work. Anyway, when the washing machine came in, that is what I wanted. All that seven children I had and I had to get on that rub board and rub, I just hugged her and cried. I like that so much. She left me and went on to the north somewhere. She was here last year. I couldn’t get to talk to her. It seemed like my mind got mixed up or something. There is something wrong with her now, but I just loved her to death for that. It was just a ringer type you know back in those days. I threw my clothes in there and washed it and I would grab them and hang them on the line. That was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the neighbors friendly in your neighborhood?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. Of course some of my people lived close by. My husband’s sister lived across in the front of us. She was just as sweet as she could be. Anything you could ask her to do enough, she was always toddling around and she was sort of heavy and she’d just toddle around, and trying to see all the kids and knew what they had and what they didn’t have. She was as sweet as she could be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned there was a store in the area. What else do remember in the area where the shopping took place? Did they have a barbershop?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah and a pool hall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that area called a particular name? Did you referred to it as a certain name?
MRS. MITCHELL: The Block. It was blocked off with all different things. That’s what they named it – the Block.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s kind of the gathering point of a lot of the people on the community?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a telephone?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about milk and groceries? Was all that bought over there on the Block, or did you go elsewhere in the city to buy it?
MRS. MITCHELL: Sometimes we would, but sometimes we would get it down there, too. We could go to the stores. We finally started going to the stores to get our groceries.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What activities outside of the home did you get involved in other than working? Did you belong to any clubs?
MRS. MITCHELL: Church is all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What church did you attend?
MRS. MITCHELL: Mt. Zion Baptist.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was it located?
MRS. MITCHELL: It’s located in Scarboro. It’s not far from what you are talking about – the Block. Do you ever know anything about the Block?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: That big white church right before you get the Block – that’s where I go.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How have you seen the community change from when you first came into Scarboro up to this day today? I know segregation was in those days. Tell me a little bit about that. What do you remember about the segregation times, during that time period?
MRS. MITCHELL: To tell you the truth about me, stuff like that didn’t never bother me too much. Like riding a bus – they wanted the blacks to sit in one place and the whites to sit in other places. That’s something I would forget. I also used to just go on in. One day I sat somewhere. I got on the bus and just sat down and somebody said, “You will get in trouble sitting there. Come back here with me.” I said, “What is that all about?” I went on back there and sat with them. When the white folks got on, they got on in the front seat. I said, “Oh, that’s what they meant.” I didn’t know what they were trying to tell me to come back there for. That’s what it was all about. Blacks were always in Gamble Valley. We had to go to the white section to work. When we get over to the white section, the white people rode the bus, too. So that’s how they come in. They got me so mixed up, you see. In our community, we just got on the bus and got in the front seat okay. But when you get over in their community and they get ready to get on the bus, it made a difference.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you mistreated in any way during that time period?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I just went along with what they said. I would tell people about me and where I lived. I hadn’t had any problem. It was rough in Mississippi in some places, but I didn’t have any problem. I stayed there like I said. Those people were good to me, and they would tell us who not to fool with it. Sometimes the whites would come in and hang with the blacks. If Mr. Brown would tell my husband, he’d say, “Don’t deal with them. Just stay like you are. They are looking for trouble. Them kind of folks will get you out and get you in trouble.” He was real nice. He didn’t play. He would tell us right from wrong. We were just like his children, and that’s how we got along with him. We couldn’t of been with no better people except him because he was just like our father. Anything he had, we had. When he got electric lights a long time before electric lights came in in Mississippi, we got electric lights. Everything they had, we had. The only thing he would laugh and tell us is that, “I ain’t got no money.” He didn’t have no money, and we didn’t have no money. We would just laugh about that. (Laughter) When I was cooking for him, his wife one night , she got aggravated at him. She said, “Clyde” – that was his name, Clyde – “if you was to die tonights, I wouldn’t know what you had. You never sit down and tell me what you have and what you ain’t got.” He put a big smile on his face and cut his eyes over there. He said “I ain’t got nothing that’s the reason why I can’t tell you.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about some of the other people that you worked for in Oak Ridge.
MRS. MITCHELL: Did you ever know Tom Clary?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: They were the first house I went to work for. Well, the first somebody I saw were those Gilliams people working in their homes. Then Tom Clary came in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where do they live – the Clary’s?
MRS. MITCHELL: At that time they lived back there in those apartments behind Penney’s. You know those big red apartments back there? He lived back there. How that got started with him, now, I worked with for some people. Did you know Jim Reading, the old Buick Company? Did you know about that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: I worked for some people who worked at that place. They were from Chattanooga. You are talking about some [inaudible]. That’s one thing about me. I have worked for nice people. I didn’t work for nobody that wasn’t nice. I didn’t have to work for them. I would walk off and tell them I would work at somebody’s house and work that day. And next week if I go and they are talking about something that they didn’t like when I left that evening, I said “Well, I hope y’all have fun. I might meet you sometime on the street and speak to you.” That meant I wasn’t coming back. But anyway – these Reading people worked for the Buick Company. I worked from them. They were from Chattanooga. Did you know Mr. Clary? Did you know Tom Clary?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MRS. MITCHELL: You never did know him. He’s from Chattanooga. What it was about the Reading people, they lived in Chattanooga. When his mother died, Miss Reading was there and watched over Tom Clary. He was just like a son of hers. She watched him all through school. Everything he did, she wasn’t saying nothing, but she watched him. She told me about this boy. She would come home at lunch when I was working for her. She would come home for lunch, and me and her would talk and talk and talk. When they got ready to build a mall, she called him. She says, “Tom, I want you to come on up here. They are fixing to build a mall, so you might get you a job.” He come on up. He looked at the place and everything. She asked him how he liked it. He said, “I like it pretty good.” She said, “Do you think you like it well enough to get you a job?” He said, “Yeah, I think I will try.” Anyway, he had the hardware store. So that’s what he went in for, the hardware store. Well, he called his dad, and his dad come up. All that talking about him and his mother – she never did say nothing about her daddy. When they said that Daddy was coming up, I got to thinking, “She never said anything about the daddy.” Anyway, Dad came on up and looked at the place. They asked him did he like it, and he said he did. Daddy laid out so much money for him to get started; he went on and got started.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the hardware store?
MRS. MITCHELL: In the hardware business.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was this in the Downtown area?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Downtown Shopping Center, we called it.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. He was down up under Sears. Sears was on top, and there was his store under there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe that would’ve been around 1955 or somewhere in that range.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah. I think so. Anyway – he really wanted somebody to clean for him. She says, “I told him Parlee. I think you had a day off that you could help them.” I said, “I can help them.” He moved them. He just had one little room – the bedroom. It looked like a little kitchen and a little living room altogether. Anyway – he would come down. He was just billing there – billing the store. He would come down and open up after they got it like that. He would open up and he would go back home and go to sleep. Well, when I got ready to go, I would go on to the store and worked until he came. He said, “Parlee, I left the door open so you can go on.” I would walk at his house. His partners were nowhere from Downtown. I would go up to his house and clean his house, and then I would come back to the store and work. I put in a lot of labor there. I would be so tired sometimes, but I knew how to work to keep myself going. It started raining hard on the people waiting, you talk about a mess. We were in some mess. Mud – they had to go out and come back in. They would bring mud in. I would mop, mop. He came to me one day and he said, “Parlee, I’ll tell you what to do. Get another mop. When you mop this up, dry it up with this mop.” I had two mops. People still come in there laughing, “Don’t nobody work in the store, but this lady here has two mops.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much money you made?
MRS. MITCHELL: No. I don’t. I don’t remember what I was getting back in those days. Anyway, it was a help. Well, he fooled around – the same lady I was talking about. They would go home every weekend. Mr. Clary would go home. She said, “Parlee.” I said, “What?” She said, “Tom didn’t come eat with me Sunday.” She would cook because he was just like her son. She loved that boy to death. She was taking care of him. She said, “You know what? I believe he done got a girlfriend. I believe he’s courting and fixing to get married no doubt. He stopped coming to eat with me.” While the next week he went home, and he wasn’t there. The next day we know that he done got married. She said, “Parlee, I told you.” I said, “You sure did say you did.” Anyway – after he got married, I still worked for him. She was a schoolteacher, she went on teaching and she got her job teaching school and all. He was working at the store. I still worked at the store. I just kept on. Every chance I would get some time, I would work at the store twice a week because I didn’t have as much other days. We all got along good. He got married, and here she comes getting kind of fat. I looked at her. (Laughter) She had a little boy and named him Tom, after his daddy. He was the sweetest thing. I would just rock him and sing to him. Ms. Clary heard me singing to him one day, and she said, “Oh, Parlee your singing to Tom this morning.” He lay in there looking up at me with those little eyes just shining, and I’m just rocking him. When the thunder and all come in I’d be there. I was singing a church song to him. She said, “She was singing a beautiful song.” She was telling the whole story. I rock Tom to sleep and got him and put him in the bed. I wrapped them up, and he went on to sleep. She was out there washing the clothes. She came on and got ready. They should grow Tom up so sweet. Here comes another little boy. That little boy came in rough, and I tried to do what I could, but that little boy wouldn’t pay me a bit of mind.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MRS. MITCHELL: His name was Roger. (Laughter) I tried to rock him, and he just jumps out, just do everything and look at me so hateful and mean. Where he got all the junk from, I don’t know. Well, when he got where he could walk and get around, he would get out of my way because I would’ve spanked him, but he would let me catch him. He would walk out in the yard and just talk about me – “I’m going to need to fire you anyway. You ain’t no good. You are this. You are that.” Poor little Tommy would be out there with him, and Tom was just about as sweet as he could be. Ms. Clary said, “I just don’t know what to do about them.” I said to leave him alone. I said, “I’m going to do my work. He can stay out there in the yard all day. If he wants to stay out there in the hot and holler and fuss, let him stay out there. I’m going to stay in the house where it’s cool and do the work.” I did, and he stayed out there and fussed. Tommy would try to stay out there with him. He would come in and look at the TV. He just wouldn’t do nothing. Roger wouldn’t do nothing right. He seems like he is a sweet as can be now. He will tell me sometimes, “Parlee, I sure am sorry I treated you like I did.” I said, “I don’t know whether you’re sorry or not.” Next time – here she comes sticking out here and comes a little girl. She was a pretty little girl, just as sweet as she could be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her name?
MRS. MITCHELL: Her name was Ann. Ann was her name. (Laughter) I said, “Well, I tried.” I could tell she was going to be a little bit different from Tom, and she wasn’t going to be quite as bad as Roger. She was in the middle of them. I would tell her to do something or not to do something, and, “My daddy said I could do it.” I said, “That don’t sound right. Mr. Clary didn’t tell her she could do that.” That’s how she got away with everything. And her daddy told her she could do it. Her daddy told her she could cook, and I said, “Mr. Clary didn’t have no business telling her she could cook. She couldn’t cook.” She would get up there and cook an egg. One day, she got up there to cook every eye on the stove turned on and couldn’t cut off. Now, call Daddy then “Daddy, I got all the eyes on and I can’t cut them off.” Mr. Clary was so nice. Mr. Clary was just as sweet as he could be. He said, “Baby, you get down out of that chair, and pull that chair back from the stove. You get back from the stove.” She did that. He come in – “Parlee.” I said, “Yes sir.” He’d say, “Ann is up there scared. She done got all the eyes on the stove cut on and can’t cut them off. Will you just stop working down here and come on and go out there and stay with her?” I wanted to go up there and whoop her. I said, “If they don’t whoop the children, I won’t either. I just let them go on.” I know if they had been mine [inaudible]. I went on, and she standing there with her eyes shining. When he got there and came on in. He’s just as nice as he could be. He went on and patted her and hugged her and turned off every eye on the stove. “Well, I’m going back to the store. Parlee, I don’t guess anything else happened. If anything happens, just let me know.” I said to myself I would sure let him know because I might whoop this little girl and have to call you to tell me to get me off her. (Laughter) That went on. I guess that was the biggest thing about them. Everything she would do – I would tell her something that I knew she wasn’t supposed to do. She would always tell me her daddy says she can do it. That’s the big thing about her – “Daddy said I could.” She will laugh about it now because she had a lot of things that Daddy didn’t tell her that she went on and did. She knew she could get away with it because she told me her daddy said. I know he was the boss, and he was supposed to tell her right from wrong. One time she be going through a fuss, and Mr. Clary didn’t tell her nothing. He didn’t tell her to do nothing. “Yes, he did tell me I could do it.” She’d bush up on herself like she is going to whoop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work for the Clarys solely for them? Were you working for somebody else over the years?
MRS. MITCHELL: Over the years, I worked for different ones. I worked for Mr. Clary – after we ever got that store, every chance I would work in the store. After just starting to work, I started working one day a week with free on Friday. I would work for the Pries. Do you know the Pries?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MRS. MITCHELL: I would work for them on a Wednesday. I worked for the Cams on Tuesdays at half a day. Do you know that Cams? I bet you don’t know them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t know them.
MRS. MITCHELL: They sold the farmers lot. He got passed away, but she still living. I worked for a lot of people maybe once or twice because some of the people I didn’t like. People I didn’t like, I didn’t work for them. I worked for one – how old are you? It might’ve been you did that. I worked for a woman one day, and I went to work in the morning and she was in the kitchen. I said, “What can I start on?” She said, “I guess you can start in the bathroom.” I walked in the bathroom and I didn’t see a thing. I went back to her and said, “Where was all the cleaning stuff?” She said, “Parlee, I don’t have nothing but that piece of soap in there.” She had half a bar of P & G soap lying in the bathroom for me to clean the bathroom. I said, “Is this what you clean the bathroom with?” She said, “Yeah, that’s all I clean with.” That’s all she had, okay. I got my mopping thing. I just went on and washed it. The next week I went there, and she’s there. This one is going to be new what I’m going to say now. She said, “My husband said – when he went in the bathroom, a piece of hair was lying in the face bowl.” I said, “A piece of hair lying in the face bowl?” It could’ve been her hair or the children’s hair. It could’ve been mine. I don’t I was it was. I know I did the no hair when I was in there cleaning. I said to myself, “I won’t be back here. He can clean his own hair out of his face bowl.” That’s why said it might’ve been you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It wasn’t me. Tell me about what the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your lifetime.
MRS. MITCHELL: In my lifetime, the most amazing thing – it was the washing machine. There are TVs and all this kind of stuff that they started to bring in. Electric lights – that was a big thing, electricity was a big thing when it come in. It was a long time before I could get a lot of the electric stuff, but still I always thought I’d like the electric irons and all that stuff and electric cookers and all that stuff. That’s just all amazing to me. Now when the electric iron came in, oh goodness. We had to set those old irons to the fire and then it would take them so long to get hot. Then you had to clean them and clean them. All the white shirts, those men’s shirts. We were glad when the electric iron came in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you still cook a lot today?
MRS. MITCHELL: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You’ve had enough cooking then?
MRS. MITCHELL: Flynn come by to see me yesterday, and I know he’s going to look for something to eat. I told him – I looked at him and said, “I don’t cook like I used to.” It wasn’t long before he said, “I’ll be back.” Every time he comes to my house he don’t live here, he is visiting and his daughter was sick. Had her kidney replaced. So he was here to see her. He got up and left. I said, “He’s going to get himself some meat because I done told him I wasn’t cooking.” He jumped up and said he’d be back. I told him I don’t cook. There was a time though when I would’ve gone up in the kitchen and cooked something. He would always eat. I had two friends come in – my grandchildren’s daddy. He comes in, and they don’t eat. He came in one night, and I had three little fish is that I had to fry. I was going to eat one and asked if he wanted one. He said, “That sound good. I’ll eat them.” He came in here and ate my little fish, and I didn’t have no supper. All my people are like that. Everybody likes to come to my house. They know they’re going to get food. My kids were down for Thanksgiving, they come from Grand Rapids, Michigan. My daughter got up in the morning. She was so busy to come take me, I think she had just seven biscuit. I just looked at her and turned my head. I’d make big things that come with the stoves, just full of biscuits. She called me back and still tells me about all that eating she did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All the time you lived in Oak Ridge, have you felt safe living in Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes. That’s one thing. I might be running in talking about this and then the other thing. That don’t bother me. I don’t think about the plants and places like that. I just put all that in the hands of the Lord. That’s just the way I am. I go down on my knees to pray at night, and everything – I fix it with Him because he’s the boss man. There’s nothing I could do about this. I just tell Him about it and ask him how to take care of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the most historical event that you have seen in your lifetime? What would that be?
MRS. MITCHELL: I’m trying to think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything related to the civil rights movement?
MRS. MITCHELL: Well, I guess the president would be it – and all that civil rights stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Our president today?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, because all that civil rights stuff – I didn’t bother about that. I put it all in the hands of the Lord and asked Him to take care of it. Whatever is going on around me, I always ask the Lord to take care of it. He’s the one who can fix things better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is your husband deceased?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes, he died. He passed away in 1996. It’s funny how that works. In 1969, we bought our house. We moved into our house. Then in 1996 he passed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Are all your children living today?
MRS. MITCHELL: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where are they located?
MRS. MITCHELL: I have three in Grand Rapids, Michigan; one in Detroit; and the rest of them just around here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many grandchildren do you have?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t know. I couldn’t count. I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren – good gracious, I tell them to get out of here and get going.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What advice would you give young people today?
MRS. MITCHELL: The advice I would give young people today is to try to live right. That’s the main thing. Try to work on your good living. Don’t steal, don’t cheat. Try to do the best you can. If you do the best you can, the Lord will take care of the rest. That’s the way I see that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What you like or dislike about Oak Ridge?
MRS. MITCHELL: I know a lot is going on that I don’t like, but I’ll let that go ahead. I see so much right is wrong, and I see so much wrong that wasn’t going on in the city when I was here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you have a nickname that I’ve heard people call you. What is that?
MRS. MITCHELL: (Laughter) That must be Big Mama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you ever get the name Big Mama?
MRS. MITCHELL: From my grandkids. All the children that run with my grandkids, they say Big Mama, too. That’s how I did it. Kids I don’t even know run down here, “High, Big Mama.” I say, “Hi, Baby.” I don’t know who they are, but they know I’m Big Mama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You have a reputation if you want to call it that over in your community that people respect you quite highly. How did you become that type of an icon?
MRS. MITCHELL: All I can say is it’s just the way I live. It’s different from the way so many people over their lives. That’s really what goes on. Some of those folks up there cutting up and going on. I don’t do those things. I didn’t want to hear them. They get started, and I go on about my business because I don’t deal with all that kind of stuff.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve heard stories about where young boys or girls may be acting up and someone says your name or you might speak to them, and they straighten up.
MRS. MITCHELL: Yeah, they do that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why do you think they do that?
MRS. MITCHELL: That’s the respect they have for me. They know I don’t do that. I stay on them about that. That’s the respect I get from them. It’s good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t guess. Trying to think of anything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is your involvement with your church now? What do you do with the church?
MRS. MITCHELL: I don’t do much. I’m just one of the mothers we have. That’s why I can stay so strict on them. That’s what us mothers are supposed to do – talk to the young people and try to tell them right from wrong. Nowadays, I don’t think they listen. They go around the corner do anything they want to. Children nowadays just don’t respect people like they did back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mrs. Mitchell, it’s been a pleasure and a history learning for me to interview you. This oral history that you have given us today will be I think a valuable asset in the history of Oak Ridge. Hopefully, our future generations will pull up your oral history and see how life was and realize that things today are quite different than when you first got here. I thank you very much for your time.
MRS. MITCHELL: Okay, it’s good to come in and do it for you. I said sometimes I wasn’t going to do it, but then I said I would think about. It’s something they can talk about after I’m gone. They can pick up a paper and read some of the stuff.
[End of Interview]